Beth Pratt

A lifelong advocate for wildlife, Beth Pratt has worked in environmental leadership roles for over thirty years, and in two of the country’s largest national parks: Yosemite and Yellowstone. As the California Regional Executive Director for the National Wildlife Federation, Pratt leads the #SaveLACougars campaign to build the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, which started constrution on Earth Day in 2022. The largest wildlife crossing of its kind in the world, it will help save a population of mountain lions from extinction. Her innovative conservation work has been featured by The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC World Service, CNN, CBS This Morning, the Los Angeles Times, Men’s Journal, The Guardian, NPR, AP News, and more. Di Angelo Publications released her book, I Heart Wildlife: A Guided Activity Journal for Connecting With the Wild World, in 2020, and Heyday Books just published a second edition of her book, When Mountain Lions are Neighbors: People and Wildlife Working It Out In California in 2024. Her newest book, Yosemite Wildlife, will be published by the Yosemite Conservancy in 2025. She has also given a TEDx talk about coexisting with wildlife, “How a Lonely Cougar in Los Angeles Inspired the World,”, and is featured in the documentary, “The Cat that Changed America,” and the reboot of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Beth spends much of her time in Los Angeles, but makes her home outside of Yosemite, “my north star,” with her six dogs, two cats, and the mountain lions, bears, foxes, frogs, and other wildlife that frequent her backyard.