Proceedings of the Seventh Mountain Lion Workshop

44 SOUTH DAKOTA MOUNTAIN LION STATUS REPORT · Kintigh
visitors about Mt. Lions and personal
safety while in Mt. Lion country.
H) Develop a public involvement plan
for implementation during 2003 and
2004 for inclusion in our
management planning process.
Over the last 10 years South Dakota has
not significantly changed the way we
manage lions. During this period of time
they remained on the State’s Threatened
Species List and very little was done to
manage them other than offering them full
protection of the law. Our awareness of
lions did increase significantly during this
time as we observed a steady apparent
increase in their numbers. In recent years an
Action Plan was developed to guide staff in
dealing with problem lions. This Action
Plan is currently under revision and will be
included in the overall Management Plan.
We also created a system for documenting
and tracking lion activity. More significant
changes are looming on the horizon as we
remove the lion from the Threatened Species
List and focus on concerted effort to manage
our lions.
DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE
Lions are currently distributed
throughout the Black Hills, which contains
the most suitable habitat in South Dakota.
Some evidence of breeding populations also
exists in the Custer National Forest in
Harding County, the Badlands of eastern
Pennington County and on the Pine Ridge
Reservation of Shannon, Jackson and Bennett
counties.
Reports of lion activity have been
received across all of South Dakota.
Verification of reports outside of the Black
Hills has proven to be very difficult,
especially east of the Missouri River. Most
occurrences outside of the Black Hills have
been associated with river drainages that
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEVENTH MOUNTAIN LION WORKSHOP
provide marginal habitat.
The lion population in South Dakota
appears to be still growing slowly at this
time. Some uncertainty exists as to what the
carrying capacity of the Black Hills for lions
may be, though it is generally felt we are
very close to that level now. Some evidence
of dispersal from the Black Hills exists. To
date we have only detected young males
dispersing from the Black Hills. One young
female was radio collared on the very edge
of the Black Hills and some thought that she
might disperse was expressed. She was
poached before that determination was
made.
The cougar population in the Black Hills
was estimated using program PUMA (Beier
1993), incorporating parameters obtained
from radio-collared cougars and habitat
quality derived from a habitat-relation
model. Annual home ranges were generated
for 10 adult cougars monitored > 8 months,
and spatial distribution of established males
was analyzed using a home range overlap
index. The area of the Black Hills was
estimated at 8,400 km 2 , comprised of
6,702.9 km 2 of high quality and 1,697.1 km 2
of lower quality habitat (based on a habitatrelation
model developed for the species).
Mean annual home range size of established
adult male cougars (n = 3) was 809.2 km 2 ,
and was significantly larger (P < 0.05) than
that of adult females (n = 4), 182.3 km 2 .
Based on sightings of family groups and
radio-collared females, we documented up
to 5 females occurring in established male
ranges. Percent overlap for 3 established
cougars averaged 33% (range = 18.0 -
52.0%). Based on 5 population simulations,
the total number of cougars in the Black
Hills was estimated to be 127 to 149
cougars; 46 to 49 adult females, 12 to 29
adult males; 21 to 24 yearling females and
males; and 45 to 48 female and male kittens.