Facts: Mountain lions are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, and poaching of their wild prey base. They are persecuted across their range by retaliatory hunting due to livestock depredation, and due to fear that they pose a threat to human life. Pumas are legally hunted in many western US states, although hunting was banned by popular referendum in California in 1990. Road kills are the principal cause of mortality in the endangered Florida panther subpopulation, and heavily travelled roads are a major barrier to puma movements and dispersal.