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As the human population on earth approaches 8 billion individuals, dispersed within
just about every crevasse that can be occupied, it is refreshing to know that a large
predator, such as the mountain lion, can still make its way to and subsequently recolo-
nize a region that was once a central part of its distribution. Considering the dispersal
lengths documented in this (Thompson and Jenks 2005, 2010; Hawley et al. 2016)
and other studies (Stoner et al. 2010), if the mountain lion was provided the oppor-
tunity to recolonize other regions, no human intervention would be required to en-
sure success. Nevertheless, the need to traverse inhospitable habitat punctuated with
high- speed highways and ever- expanding cities and towns will likely make future jour-
neys by dispersing male and female mountain lions difficult and rarely successful.
It is not known whether mountain lions consistently occupied the Black Hills or
whether they were extirpated at some time and later dispersers from Wyoming recolo-
nized the region. We do know, based on the work accomplished on ge ne tics, that the
population was founded by just a few individuals (Thompson 2009; Juarez et al. 2016).
Those first individuals were rarely seen, and some were likely killed, possibly because
they were mistaken for game animals or because the presence of the species was
considered a threat to livestock (fig. E.1). One such individual was an adult female
with kittens that was found dead early in our work in the southern Black Hills. Actions
such as this may have kept the population low from 1978, when the bounty was re-
moved from the species, until the late 1990s, when the population began to increase
and we began our study of the species. At that time, few people, either locals within
the Black Hills or employees of South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks, believed there
were many lions in the area or that the species had the capability to increase to the
extent that has been documented.