The Cougar Fund

The Cougar Fund "Protecting America's Greatest Cat"
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06/03/2026

Happy Wild Lives Wednesday! Today's compilation celebrates the hardworking mothers of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

The health of a wildlife population is often reflected in the health and success of its mothers. Black bear sows must nurse, shelter and protect their cubs while spending up to two years teaching them what is safe to eat and where to find it. Grizzly mothers do the same, keeping cubs close for up to three years and fiercely defending them against any threat. Does hide their fawns in tall grass in the early weeks of life, slipping away and returning only to nurse so as not to draw predators near. Elk cows leave the herd to give birth before making their way back, knowing that for a young calf, there is safety in numbers.

As you can see in these clips, the young also shadow their mothers closely, absorbing the learned behaviors, instincts and survival skills that will determine whether they thrive once they are independent.

We feel lucky to have caught these families on our trail cameras. As many of you know, it was the extended sighting of a mother mountain lion raising and nurturing her young kittens that inspired the founding of The Cougar Fund. Some things stay with you.

06/02/2026

Welcome to Cougar Month. This June, we’re going nose to tail to explore the incredible anatomy and physiology of one of North America’s most elusive predators.

Twice a week, we’ll take a closer look at how it is exquisitely tuned to gather, process, and respond to information in its environment in order to survive. Learn about sight, smell, hearing, powerful jaws, silent paws, flexible spines, balancing tails..and much more.

Some posts will be scientific.
Some surprising.
Some just plain fascinating.

Don't worry, your favorite Wild Life Wednesdays will still be headlining the middle of the week with all the other animals that cougars share their space with!

We are always grateful to David Neils for his amazing footage, his mentorship, and dear friendship.


05/27/2026

While spotting a mountain lion is rare occurrence, you may have passed a sign of cougar presence without ever knowing it: A scrape.

As face to face confrontation can be lethal for mountain lions, scrapes allow them to communicate critical information without physically interacting. Made by raking the hind feet across the ground to create a small mound of leaves, soil and twigs, they are almost always paired with urine or s**t carrying powerful pheromone signals. In a single visit to a scrape site, a mountain lion can communicate its identity, s*x, reproductive status and territorial boundaries to any other lion that passes through.

While they may look indiscriminate or random to us, scrapes are typically left at prominent locations, such as at trail junctions or along ridge lines, where lion territory borders are shared or overlapping. Males scrape far more frequently than females and will often revisit and refresh the same sites over time. Pioneering wildlife biologist Dr. Maurice Hornocker was among the first to recognize these disturbed patches of ground for what they really were, a discovery that transformed our understanding of how these solitary animals navigate their social world across vast territories.

Freedom to Roam. On this Memorial Day, we remember the men and women who gave their lives in service to others, and the ...
05/25/2026

Freedom to Roam. On this Memorial Day, we remember the men and women who gave their lives in service to others, and the families who carry that loss forward.

We are thankful that freedom extends beyond being able to gather, to speak or to choose.

There are quiet reminders that we are free when we walk beside rivers, wander through forests, climb mountains, gasp at an untrammeled vista, enjoy public lands or know that we share the natural world with our wildlife.

And it is in these places that reverence might overtake us because they are not guaranteed.

They are part of an inheritance shaped by sacrifice, responsibility, and care across generations of those who have served.

Today is for remembrance, and for gratitude. What special. freedom do you cherish and are thankful for today? Please share it in the comments.

05/20/2026

What do a mountain lion, porcupine, spotted fawns, black bears and maybe even a spider all have in common? They all took interest in this this trail camera.

Our trail cameras are uninvited guests in a world that was full and busy without them. While the spider likely set up shop here by coincidence, its the curiosity of animals that often makes encounters like these possible. There is still much to learn about how and why animals investigate the unfamiliar, but we know it is an adaptive behavior that helps them assess threats, discover food sources, and better understand their surroundings.

We hope wherever this Wild Lives Wednesday finds you, you are staying curious too. The more we understand the landscapes we share with our animal and human neighbors, the better equipped we are to protect them.

The Public Lands Rule ended today in the name of “productive use.” That sounds harmless enough until you ask a very simp...
05/19/2026

The Public Lands Rule ended today in the name of “productive use.”

That sounds harmless enough until you ask a very simple question: Productive for who?

Who wins?

Because when politicians and industries say public land is not being “used” unless it is being drilled, mined, grazed, logged, or developed, what they really mean is that ecosystems only matter if somebody powerful is making money from them.

And there’s the real irony.

When corporations want more profit, new leases can be approved overnight. More extraction. More roads. More damage. More sacrifice of that without monetary value in the name of “growth.”

But what happens when biodiversity collapses? When rivers dry up? When migration routes have disappeared, does encroachment and fragmentation carve habitat into a jigsaw puzzle with too many missing pieces, pieces that determine whether an entire species can survive?.

We can’t just make another rule; we can’t just seek out new investors, we can’t turn on the money and restore all that has been lost.

Who loses?

We rely on public lands for food, energy, clean air and water, wildlife habitat, and places to recreate. The rule was put in place to balance extraction of natural resources and protection of public lands and waters for future generations.

There will always be some kind of ecosystem but will it be the version that keeps all we know alive today? The rule safeguarded the conditions that life depends on.

Rescinding the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule is greed masquerading as policy.

A few people get richer. Everybody else inherits a poorer world.




05/15/2026

Endangered Species Day invites us to focus on individual species at risk.

But survival depends on conditions and in today’s world conditions depend on intent, on will, on chance, and on choice.

Clean water, clean air, intact habitat, functional predator-prey relationships, food production without pesticides, space to move, time to adapt.

Protecting against extinction is more than just getting a name put on a list.

The survival of threatened and endangered species has never rested on a single law, policy, or protected boundary.

Environmental protection laws, intact public lands, pollinators, migration corridors, stable climatic conditions, and functioning ecosystems are all connected. Each component is essential, but none can do the work alone.

Today is about recognizing that extinction is the failure of an entire system and not a single species slipping through the net. In an age of accelerating anthropogenic change, the loss of species through preventable and unmitigated human impacts is not inevitable, it is a reflection of collective choices and priorities. We honor the profound interconnectedness of life, and will never losing sight of our commitment to protect those who struggle to remain.

Thomas D Mangelsen-your grizzly and polar bear images are perfect for this post-thank you!
Other images-public use stock photos

05/13/2026

Happy Wild Lives Wednesday! Later this week, Endangered Species Day will turn our attention to the countless species fighting for survival in a changing world. One that exists right here in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is the whitebark pine.

The Clark's Nutcracker is our featured Wild Life today, because it is largely responsible for the reproduction of the whitebark pine. These species have coevolved, so as their cones do not open on their own, they rely on the sharp, specialized beak of the Clark's Nutcracker to extract their seeds. Carrying and caching tens of thousands of seeds annually, this remarkable bird gives the slow growing tree its best chance at spreading. A cached seed that goes uncollected becomes a seedling, and over time a pillar of the landscape.

As a tree uniquely tolerant of harsh and windy conditions, the whitebark pine provides havens for animals and plants at high elevations. Its protective canopy allows for young plants to flourish, as does its ability to hold snowpack and regulate melting. Beyond providing shelter for small mammals and birds, it provides them and the threatened grizzly bear with nutrient dense seeds.

As the climate warms, mountain pine beetle outbreaks become more prevalent and resilience to white pine blister rust continues to decline. The mutualistic relationship between the Clark's Nutcracker and this struggling tree species is more critical than ever. If you want to learn more, look into the whitebark pine restoration efforts happening across the GYE. These are the kinds of relationships worth protecting.

05/10/2026

From the first heartbeat of the young to the last heartbeat of the mother, we witness the bookends of survival: the survival of all species. Between these moments are stories, some written by the complex and unpredictable natural world, where risk is inherent and the maternal instinct is fierce. Some written by a changing world influenced by values and choices.
For cougars and other mammals such as bears, young remain dependent for a long time and reproduction is slow. It is not only the lives of offspring that depend on the wild mother, but also the continuity of her species.

Today, as we celebrate all mothers we are reminded that The Cougar Fund was born because of one. A mother whose kittens could have lost her, a stark realization that set in motion every step we have taken since then.

Founding The Cougar Fund was an action born of inspiration, a vision for understanding cougars, and a voice where there had been silence.

Each year, on Mother's Day, we remember Spirit, and every mother out there, knowing that the work of motherhood is common to us all.

Thanks as always to our co founder Thomas D Mangelsen for his wonderful images of Spirit and Kittens

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