From The Washington Post:
The presence of the mountain lions, many of which have been found with freshly killed deer in their stomachs, is a startling signal that modern suburban and exurban America — without intending to do so — has transformed itself into superb wildlife habitat. With deer nearly everywhere, the big cats, it seems, are finding haute cuisine in the land of big-box stores.
Last year, one ran through downtown Omaha. Last month, one was shot in the suburbs of Sioux City. This month, a radio-collared mountain lion was spotted in the outskirts of Grand Forks, N.D. One was photographed in mid-October on a farm near Marshalltown in central Iowa, a confirmed sighting that deeply disturbed people at the recent meeting here.
…First, there are probably more mountain lions in the continental United States now than before European settlement (more than 31,000, by one recent estimate). The resurgence began in the 1960s, when several western states, where mountain lion populations had been reduced but never wiped out, changed the legal status of the cats from varmint to big game, with limited or no hunting.