108 Mountain Lions of the Black Hills
expected, based on the information we had collected from radio- collared lions that
had first dispersed from the Black Hills to the Slim Buttes region of Harding County,
South Dakota, which abuts North Dakota. One of those dispersers traversed diago-
nally across North Dakota, only to stop north and east of Grand Forks along the Red
River (Thompson and Jenks 2010). The lion remained in that area for a short period
and fi nally crossed the river and moved to the Minnesota- Manitoba border in the
Roseau Wildlife Management Area (we were able to follow the path of this individual
with the help of the Minnesota Department of Natu ral Resources). At the time I alerted
the Manitoba Ministry of Natu ral Resources, hoping that its employees would attempt
to find and subsequently follow the animal if it moved farther to the north. Unfortu-
nately, that did not happen. However, ge ne tic analyses further confirmed this pattern
of movement north and east out of the Black Hills (Juarez et al. 2016).
We expected, based on the original analy sis conducted by Anderson, Lindzey, and
McDonald (2004), that lions in the Black Hills were more closely related to those in
Wyoming (FST = 0.024 [index of population structure]) than to those in North Dakota
(FST = 0.043), and our more complete analy sis of mountain lion ge ne tics also indicated
this relationship. Overall, these results provided support for a movement conduit for
figure 7.2. Samples for ge ne tic analyses also were collected from mountain lions
captured in the North Dakota Badlands Photo by Dave Wilckens.