The resilient mountain lion goes by many other names: puma, cougar, panther, catamount — even “ghost cat.” Over the past century in California, it has survived habitat loss and government-sponsored predator extermination campaigns that wiped out the state’s grizzly bears and gray wolves.

But today mountain lions in Southern California and along the Central Coast are gravely threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation from freeways and rampant sprawl development.