Introduction 7Few documented sightings of the species occurred during the 1970s in the Black
Hills region. These limited sightings contributed to the 1978 grant of legal protection
in South Dakota. At that time the mountain lion was reclassified as “state threat-
ened.” The 1980s also saw few sightings, either because few animals moved into South
Dakota from the west or because of the failure to report sightings during this period.
However, in the early 1990s a trapper captured what was considered a relatively
young male south of Selby, South Dakota (east of Mobridge and east of the Missouri
River). The animal was transferred to the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish
and Parks, which fitted it with a radio collar and released it in the Black Hills. The
young lion (at the time estimated as 1.5 to 2.5 years old) was hit by a car not long after
its release, which resulted in loss of contact with the cat; it was suspected that the ra-
dio transmitter had been damaged. However, the South Dakota Department of Game,
Fish and Parks continued to receive reports of a collared mountain lion that ranged
throughout the Black Hills region, and in 1998 the male was killed in Custer County.
The cat was transferred to South Dakota State University, where necropsy confirmed
that the vehicle incident likely caused transmitter malfunction but also blindness in
one eye and damage to a front leg. At the time of its death, the cat appeared to be mal-
nourished and had been consuming porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum), likely because of
its injured condition as well as the ease of capture of this common prey species.
It is unclear whether the mountain lions sighted in the 1960s had immigrated to
the Black Hills or whether they were descendants of a few individuals remaining on
the mountain range (Turner 1974), or both (although there were no observations of
kittens at that time). The nearest mountain ranges to the Black Hills are the Bighorn
Mountains, 200 km (125 miles) to the west, and the Laramie Mountains, about 160 km
(100 miles) to the southwest (fig. 1.6). Berg, McDonald, and Strickland (1983) believed
that transient mountain lions originating from established populations in the Bighorn
Mountains recolonized the Black Hills. During our studies, one radio- collared lion did
travel from the Black Hills to the Bighorn Mountains, providing support for this hy-
pothesis. In addition, Anderson (2003) determined that the ge ne tic structure of moun-
tain lions from the central Rocky Mountains in Wyoming was similar to that of the
Black Hills population, indicating that gene flow occurred among mountain lions
occupying five mountain ranges in the two states and further supporting the movement
of lions among these mountain ranges. Because the topographic orientation of major
draws originating in southeastern Wyoming are southwest to northeast, ending in the
southern Black Hills region, and those originating between the Bighorn Mountains
and the Black Hills have a similar orientation, ending in the North Dakota Badlands
region, landscape characteristics would facilitate southwest- to- northeast dispersal and
colonization of the southern Black Hills.
In support of this belief about the movement of mountain lions into the Black Hills,
in 1995 Ted Benzon, se nior big game biologist, South Dakota Department of Game,
Fish and Parks, began recording sightings of mountain lions in the Black Hills. He