Black Hills management issues

[Emily]

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Lions hot topic



By Brandon Bennett, Black Hills Pioneer September 12, 2007



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Steve Job of BuckStop Sportsman's Warehouse in Belle Fourche submitted this production still from a trail camera he had fastened on a tree south of Spearfish near the Spearfish Canyon Rim. Courtesy photo

SPEARFISH - Debate continues to swirl about how to handle the increasing numbers of mountain lions in the Black Hills area and, to clarify any misconceptions, Dr. Brian Jansen gave a presentation on the subject at the annual South Dakota Emergency Managers Conference in Spearfish at the Convention Center.


Jansen offered several preliminary facts about the animal, descriptions of length and weight saying adult males can reach 7 feet in length and weigh about 150 pounds.
Mountain lions were rare in the Black Hills and sightings were even more rare. But they have survived because they eat just about everything, from deer to rabbits to porcupines.
Lions have a wide range, and Jansen stated researchers were baffled about one thing when it came to emigration. "When adult males decided to move and had collars on, they just disappeared when they left the Black Hills. It wasn't until we'd get a call from Oklahoma saying one had been hit by a train did we know where the lion went," he said.
The same is true of others.
One mountain lion was reportedly hit by a truck in Nebraska while another was found in Manitoba. Jansen explained that the radio collars were useless because the lion was soon out of range.
"Now, we use satellite collars, kind of like GPS. I can go to my computer in the morning, punch up the collar frequency and there he or she is," said Jansen. A server in Maryland sends him the information he needs to track the lion as it moves about.
Some in the audience questioned the number of lions in the Black Hills area, and Jansen put that at about 200. He stated his group has 33 adults with collars on and seven cubs that are wired. The Civil Air Patrol helps search for the lions that remain in the area.
Jansen did mention that habitat plays a large role in the mountain lion's movements, and the more people that move into wooded areas, the more pressure the lions will feel.

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©The Black Hills Pioneer, Newspapers, South Dakota, SD 2007

Reader Opinions:


Samantha Bollwerk Sep, 12 2007
The statement,"Mountain lions were rare in the Black Hills", is completely false. A hundred years ago mountain lions had a very large population throughout the Black Hills. Due to over hunting, their entire population was killed. They are now re-populating the area, but you cannot say that they were "rare" in the Black Hills.

[Jeep Hound]

I think they should let me hunt them