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Podcaster Joe Rogan has warned that mountain lions are running riot in certain states and eating household pets, demanding liberal politicians do more to address the problem.
Speaking on Tuesday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience on Spotify, the UFC announcer hosted hunters Cameron Hanes and Adam Greentree as guests, and the conversation quickly turned towards the stuffed lion Rogan keeps on display in his lobby.
The host explained that the lion had been shot dead after being found devouring a dairy cow, commenting on its lethality: “It’s like a werewolf’s loose in your town.”
After a digression about the Japanese military having to take action on feral bears, Rogan pivoted back to the domestic front, warning that Democrat-run states like California were doing too little to tackle the threat posed by wild lions.
“They’re doing nothing to curb the population. And this is the thing is like people go, ‘Oh, it’s OK Let nature do its thing.’ No, it doesn’t do its thing. It kills your dog, OK?” he said.
“One of the things they found out in San Francisco in the Bay Area was when they do shoot these mountain lions, they’ve done an analysis of their diet. It’s 50 percent dogs and cats.”
He continued: “Fifty percent of their diet is eating people’s pets. So, they’re hunting people’s pets. That means you are, if you’re a dog lover, you’re allowing a monster to eat your dog because you think that’s the right thing to do and to be kind with nature.
“No, you have to hunt them. You have to get them the f*** away from you and keep a healthy population of them, because if you don’t do that, it comes back to bite you in the d***.”
Rogan, a former resident of California, said the Golden State’s deer population has been hard hit because of the unchecked boom in mountain lions.
Deer is plentiful in Texas, however, he said. “You know why? Because there’s no mountain lions, and you can shoot them. California has a mountain lion problem.”
Hanes and Greentree suggested politicians seeking election were more likely to court the votes of people living in cities, who are more likely to be sympathetic towards animals and opposed to culling, not understanding its occasional necessity in the countryside.
Rogan went on to share a story about Hanes being pursued by a mountain lion while out for an evening jog and commented: “That is the consequences of letting monsters live in your neighborhood.
“That’s the difference between people that really understand what we’re talking about and people that are looking at this from this knee-jerk love and compassion for nature perspective.”
The host concluded by suggesting that trophy hunting should be rebranded as “monster control” to attract broader support, signing off by saying: “I love animals, but I am on Team People.”
The UC Davis California Mountain Lion Project estimated last year that there were around 4,500 lions in California, which was actually far fewer than the previous estimate of 6,000.
However, The San Francisco Chronicle did report in August that El Dorado County in the north of the state was being “overrun” by the predators, citing data suggesting that after 13 years of seeing a steady rate of attacks on domestic animals and livestock, around 33 annually, the total had suddenly spiked to 97 in 2023 and then 202 in 2024.
Experts said it was unclear whether the creatures’ numbers had increased, whether their behavior had changed, or whether the public was just better informed and more inclined to report attacks.
California is the only state where hunting mountain lions for sport is currently banned. However, residents are entitled to apply for permits to shoot lions that have injured or killed their animals.
Rogan has continued to slam California of late, claiming in an October episode of his show that friends of his were “fleeing L.A.” because they disliked the left-leaning political climate and suggested, as a joke, that President Donald Trump should seek to become its next governor after departing the White House in January 2029 to troll the locals.
“It’s like everybody went crazy,” Rogan said of life in Los Angeles. “It’s like there’s something that happened because of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests and the riots and all the chaos.
“Whatever the temperature of society was, it hit societal global warming where it’s like – it’s time to investigate Greenland. It’s time to move north, like this is a bad climate now. This sucks.”
The state’s current governor, Gavin Newsom, hit back by calling on Rogan to invite him on the show to answer some of his criticisms, which has yet to come to pass.
