Twenty percent of felid species worldwide are endangered or critically endangered (IUCN 2011) due to habitat loss, hunting (Robinson and Bodmer 1999), parts in demand for medicinal uses (Alves et al. 2007), and because they are often killed in response to livestock predation (Michalski et al. 2006; Monroy-Vilchis et al. 2009a; García-Alaniz et al.

2010), particularly around protected areas too small to maintain viable populations (Hoogesteijn 2001; Holmern et al. 2007; Van et al. 2007; Kissui 2008; Gusset et al. 2009). Consequently, effective conservation strategies for large cats depends in part on understanding and resolving conflicts between cats and people, especially those landowners within or near protected areas. Understanding these conflicts requires knowledge about the actual impacts of predation events as landowners’ perceptions of impacts can be biased. It is also important to understand perceptions and tolerance of local people to felids (Marker et al. 2003; Jackson and Wangchuck 2004; Zimmermann et al. 2005; Gusset et al. 2008; García-Alaniz et al. 2010). An understanding of economic impact, as even small losses might be economically significant to an individual landowner, can be important in communities with subsistence economies. Thus, management strategies to reduce felid-human conflicts must be based on empirical knowledge and local experiences.

Economic loss as a consequence of predation of domestic species has been documented worldwide (Stahl et al. 2002; Ogada et al. 2003; Patterson et al. 2004; Wang and Macdonald 2006; Gazzola et al. 2007; Van et al. 2007), including studies of felids in the Americas (Mazzolli et al. 2002; Michalski et al. 2006; Azevedo and Murray 2007; Palmeira et al. 2008; García-Alaniz et al. 2010). However, only one study has been conducted in northern Mexico (Rosas-Rosas et al. 2008). These studies generally quantified the effects of physical condition, health, age, behavior and sex of the predator and the prey as risk factors (Polisar et al. 2003; Inskip and Zimmermann 2009). A few have assessed relationships between livestock management practices and predations (Ogada et al. 2003; Michalski et al. 2006; Wang and Macdonald 2006; Van et al. 2007; Gusset et al. 2009), with even fewer suggesting predation sites were