Like the wolf and grizzly bear, the mountain lion, cougar, or puma, North America's largest cat, was once vilified as a pest to the livestock industry.  Historically ranging from coast to coast, puma populations today continue to push eastward and reclaim areas they formerly inhabited and as they do, they are nothing short of an ongoing conservation success story.  Today however, no state has more of them than California.  As encroachment of development into our wild spaces, increased demand for dwindling water supplies, and expanding transportation infrastructure, all threaten to further fragment (or separate) the state's landscapes, can we look to the puma as a tool for implementing logical conservation strategies, and to protect wildness, water, and the ecological foundation that is essential to healthy human and wildlife communities alike?

Join Anthony Giordano, local conservation biologist and wildlife ecologist, on Wednesday, November 2nd from 7 - 8pm for a FREE open-to-the-public presentation for the second installment of our Environmental Speaker Series to learn about the ways humans and mountain lions can peacefully coexist.

Anthony possess more than 20 years of experience with carnivores working around the world. He holds a double B.S. from Long Island University at Southampton College in Biology (Zoology) and Environmental Science (Biology), a M.S. in Conservation Biology and Applied Ecology from Frostburg State, and a Ph.D. in Wildlife science and Management from Texas Tech. Currently he is managing or co-managing 14 projects involving cats in 10 countries as director of S.P.E.C.I.E.S., including a fishing cat conservation effort in Bangladesh, a survey of Sri Lanka leopards with SLWCS, the first ocelot project on Trinidad, and several investigations of jaguarundi ecology.