Genetics of Mountain Lions 103son, Lindzey, and McDonald 2004). That study supported our early observations of
captured lions, that ge ne tic diversity was sufficient for the maintenance of a healthy
population. Nevertheless, our focus on the health, both ge ne tic and physical (see
chapters 5 and 6), of this new mountain lion population was increased by the establish-
ment of a harvest season and the subsequent injunction against it filed by the Mountain
Lion Foundations of California and of the Black Hills. Witnesses for the plaintiffs stated
that the harvest would cause extinction of the species in the Black Hills and that the
low population size was susceptible to diseases owing to low ge ne tic diversity. That in-
junction, however, was rejected by the court in Pierre, South Dakota, which allowed
the first limited harvest season on mountain lions to begin in October 2005.
However, we continued to won der about the ge ne tic diversity of the population,
whether the harvest would affect the ge ne tics of lions in the Black Hills, and whether
the limited immigration of lions to the Black Hills documented by Anderson, Lindzey,
and McDonald (2004), that is, one male per generation, was sufficient to maintain
the ge ne tic diversity of this population into the future. We therefore began collecting
samples for ge ne tic analyses from all captured lions and from those that were either
found dead or reported to the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks and
collected for future necropsy (Thompson 2009; fig. 7.1). Because this work was
conducted immediately before and after initiation of the limited harvest, and the popu-
lation at that time was believed to be increasing and approaching saturation, we believed
that such an evaluation would provide an accurate indication of the species’s ability to
withstand the removal of individuals through either natu ral mortality or harvest.
Evaluating Ge ne tic Diversity
From 2003 to 2006, we collected samples (muscle tissue and blood) from 134 moun-
tain lions in the Black Hills. The previous analy sis of ge ne tic diversity (Anderson,
Lindzey, and McDonald 2004) that included samples from lions in the Black Hills had
used 8 samples at 9 microsatellite loci. Because we were interested in determining
heterozygosity as an index not only of population health but also of the parentage of
individuals, Dorothy (Fecske) Wells, at the time the furbearer biologist for North
Dakota Game and Fish Department, was able to work with Michael Schwartz at the
USDA Forest Ser vice Ge ne tics Laboratory, Missoula, Montana, to add to that total
and thus allow the use of 20 microsatellite loci for our analyses ( t a b l e 7.1). During
this time, we also were able to add 18 mountain lions from North Dakota to our
samples of lions from the Black Hills, which had increased substantially over the
years, and not only determine ge ne tic diversity of the North Dakota lions but also as-
sess the ge ne tic structure (compare the lion ge ne tics of populations adjacent to those
of the Black Hills to determine whether they were genet ically distinct). We also con-
ducted population assignment tests (individual lions are assigned to populations based
on their ge ne tics) among these semi- isolated populations. At the time, North Dakota