Mountain lion welfare depends critically on adequate prey availability, particularly deer populations, with prey scarcity forcing riskier hunting behaviors and increasing conflict with humans.
Mountain lion welfare is closely linked to prey availability in ways that often go unrecognized in conservation planning. When deer populations decline due to hunting pressure, disease, or habitat loss, mountain lions face nutritional stress, more difficult and energy-costly hunts, higher injury risk from desperate predation attempts on unfamiliar prey, and increasing pressure to enter human areas in search of food. Integrated prey management that maintains healthy deer populations in mountain lion habitat is both a conservation and an individual animal welfare issue.