by Mark Chesnut - Monday, October 13, 2025
We’ve chronicled many times the danger and unintended consequences of restocking large predators to their former range for completely emotional reasons rather than because of sound scientific reasoning. In fact, the release of gray wolves in Colorado, beginning back in 2023, marked one of the biggest ballot-box biology boondoggles of all time.
So, imagine my surprise—and concern—when I recently turned the Sirius XM radio in my truck to a liberal talk station (I was driving and needed something to keep me awake) and heard a guy named Dana Milbank expounding on what a joy it would be to reintroduce mountain lions back into natural ranges throughout the eastern United States. Milbank, a “futures” columnist for The Washington Post, “writes weekly about our attempts to ‘rehumanize’ during a time of anxiety and isolation,” the Post says.
In this case, however, he seemed a little out of his element—unless letting himself be completely ruled by emotion is what they mean by “rehumanizing.”
Upon arrival at my destination, I did a quick web search and found the story he was referring to throughout the interview. And boy, was it a doozie.
That was easy to tell with the headline: “I got nose-to-nose with a mountain lion. It was scary—and magical.” The subhead proved that the story was going to be even worse than the headline had indicated: “Mountain lions in your neighborhood could be just what you need. How restoring these big cats to their historical range could help the environment and us.”
Milbank writes about tagging along with a research team that was treeing mountain lions with hounds, tranquilizing them, taking measurements and fitting them with tracking collars. Along the way, he falls in love with the cuddly creatures, so the story quickly branches off into the idea that reintroducing lions to their former ranges would be a sweet thing to do—and maybe even make us all feel just a little wilder at heart.
And he makes it sound like there are only two sides to the story—lions will either kill you or make us all happier—with no thought to the impact reintroduction could have on current wildlife populations in areas where lions previously existed.
“Various counts suggest there have been only about 30 fatal attacks on humans in the United States over more than a century, not much more than the number of people in the U.S. killed by lightning in a single year,” he wrote. “But America’s great cat offers enormous benefits to humans, both in the way it can help the environment and in the way its presence can make us feel more alive and in tune with the wild.”
Sound familiar? Cue the Colorado wolf lovers, whose pet project is costing the state natural resources agency time, personnel and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in renumeration for livestock killed by those cuddly gray wolves.
Milbank’s column is chock full of touchy-feely wording to make readers believe they need to have a pair of mountain lions living in their neighborhood park.
“The mountain lion is perhaps the last big piece of the ‘rewilding’ puzzle east of the Mississippi,” Milbank wrote. “It will be a slow process, if it happens at all. But the possibility is tantalizing. Mountain lions are a ‘keystone species, which means these large carnivores have the power to shape and maintain entire ecosystems by keeping animals lower down the food chain in check…”
He is, of course, referring to the white-tailed deer, the most popular big game animal in the United States. In fact, deer hunters spend millions upon millions of dollars to enjoy their pastime, while also paying for conservation of all wildlife species through license and tag fees paid to state fish and game agencies. It’s likely those agencies wouldn’t like to see deer populations plummet, which could in turn cause license and tag sales to plummet.
Of course, other animals “lower down the food chain” include your neighbor’s Yorkie and your pet cat, which are already endangered by burgeoning coyote populations in many urban and suburban areas of the eastern United States.
Biologists will tell you that mountain lions have an extremely large home range, some up to 300 square miles (roughly one-fifth the size of Rhode Island), with males having much larger territories than females. The exact size varies based on terrain, prey availability and population density, but is most influenced by the need to find enough food and mates.
While there are areas in the United States with 300 square miles of raw wilderness, they’re not all that common in most heavily populated states. Burgeoning human populations are, in fact, why mountain lions no longer exist in much of their former range.
Milbank concludes his column by describing his elation with looking a treed mountain lion right in the face during the excursion.
“Looking straight up at her, my instinctive fear gives way to wonder,” he wrote. “For right here, amid the ordinary—the ubiquitous Douglas fir and western hemlock—is the extraordinary and the exotic, the likes of which I had only seen before in a zoo. I want this for the woods where I roam in Virginia—and for all of us across this land who don’t now have it.”
Ultimately, there are likely a lot of reasons why mountain lions could be successfully reintroduced in some eastern parts of the country, and a lot of reasons why they shouldn’t in most areas. One thing is for certain: Wildlife biologists with knowledge of mountain lions, habitat and wildlife management should make any such decision.
Relying on a futures writer who “writes weekly about our attempts to ‘rehumanize’ during a time of anxiety and isolation” for the necessary information on such an important matter is about as logical as letting Colorado voters decide during a general election whether to stock wolves in cattle country.
About the Author
Freelance writer and editor Mark Chesnut is the owner/editorial director at Red Setter Communications LLC in Jenks, Okla. An avid hunter, shooter and field-trialer, he has been covering Second Amendment issues and politics on a near-daily basis for over 25 years.
Photo by Tim Christie; timchristiephoto.com