blake
Life Member
NEWS:
Mountain Lions make a return
CHADRON, Neb. - Evidence continues to mount that Nebraska has a resident population of mountain lions for the first time in more than a century.
Snapshots from a scouting camera in northwest Nebraska captured the images of two cougar kittens feasting on the remains of a field-dressed deer in a remote, snow-covered Pine Ridge valley.
The Dec. 21 photographs came from a motion-sensitive camera set out northeast of Hay Springs by Tyler Hunter of Chadron, Neb.
“This is documentation that mountain lions are reproducing in this state for the first time in 100 years,'' said Sam Wilson at the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission's Lincoln headquarters.
Hunter's photographs aren't the first of mountain lion kittens in Nebraska, but they are part of a rare portfolio of photographic proof.
“We finally feel like we have enough evidence that we're not seeing a single female with a litter, but probably multiple females with multiple litters,'' said Wilson, Game and Parks' nongame mammal and furbearer manager.
The permanent return of a large predator that is a part of Nebraska's natural heritage isn't a simple matter. Wildlife biologists welcome them for their key role in the balance of a healthy ecosystem. The mountain lion also called cougar or puma generally avoids people, but some landowners and ranchers are wary.
While still a scarce species across the country, this new evidence of litters in Nebraska adds to a steadily growing list of adult sightings, some as far east as Omaha. A male cougar was captured in Omaha's Old Mill area in 2003.
Western Iowa also has had sightings of free-roaming mountain lions, but no reports of natural population.
Nebraska's cougar population has the attention of the State Legislature. Lawmakers passed a bill last week allowing landowners to shoot mountain lions that are preying on livestock or threatening people.
The mountain lion, a Nebraska native, was hunted as the state was settled and driven out by the end of the 1800s. Despite annual reports since the 1950s, no confirmed sighting was made in the state until 1991, when an adult female was shot by a hunter near Harrison.
There now have been 99 confirmed sightings in Nebraska, mostly in the Pine Ridge
region and elsewhere in the Panhandle. Many probably were the same animal seen in different places over several years, Wilson said.
The popularity of digital cameras strapped by hunters to trees or posts along game trails for scouting deer has produced a flurry of new photographs of mountain lions in Nebraska.
An infrared sensor triggers the camera shutter when something passes by. Usually it's a deer, raccoon or coyote but sometimes it's a mountain lion.
Wilson and other biologists long have said that the presence of female cougars in Nebraska is significant because they make it possible to have a breeding population. Those expectations were realized in recent years.
The first proof of young cougars in the state came in late February 2007, when Game and Parks officials recovered the carcass of a 6-month-old female hit by a vehicle as it followed an adult and two other cubs across U.S. Highway 20 east of Chadron.
A day earlier, however, images from a trail camera set out by Lincoln-based wildlife photographer Michael Forsberg in the hills east of Chadron showed two kittens and their mother. One kitten stopped to lick ice in a frozen creek. The other was close behind its mother.
About four months later, a male cub was killed crossing U.S. Highway 385 near Chadron State Park.
Wilson said no one knows if the killed kittens were part of the family Forsberg photographed.
The second sighting of cougar cubs was confirmed in December 2008 when Steve Masek, a Game and Parks conservation technician, captured an image of an adult and a cub at a deer carcass in the Pine Ridge.
There is no Nebraska hunting season for cougars, and this year's legislation clarified and put into law the Game and Parks guidelines for dealing with cougars.
If a mountain lion is not threatening people and has not killed or injured livestock, it is to be left undisturbed. The commission policy calls for killing mountain lions that have entered a community, killed livestock or threatened people.
The legislation's sponsor, State Sen. LeRoy Louden of Ellsworth, said ranchers needed a legal means to protect their livestock and families from threatening mountain lions. Sen. Cap Dierks of Ewing told of a big cat near his home and, another time, one that watched a haying crew.
Wilson said the goal is to eliminate problem animals while protecting the majority of cougars that avoid people and feed on deer and other game.
In Iowa, any mountain lion can be shot legally. They are not listed in state law as a designated wildlife species because they were considered extinct when the state's fish and game laws first were crafted. Recent efforts to add cougars as wildlife species have failed in the Iowa Legislature.
Most of Nebraska's mountain lions apparently are animals dispersing from a growing population in South Dakota's Black Hills region north of Chadron.
Neighboring Wyoming and Colorado also have rebounding cougar populations.
Mountain lions sighted in central and eastern Nebraska and in Iowa most likely are roaming young males seeking females and a new range.
“They're just passing through,'' Wilson said. “That's why we get random reports from across the rest of the state.''
No reproducing population is known to exist anywhere in the Midlands but in the Pine Ridge.
“They belong here,'' Wilson said, “because they're a native species.''
This post is for informational purposes only.
Mountain Lions make a return
CHADRON, Neb. - Evidence continues to mount that Nebraska has a resident population of mountain lions for the first time in more than a century.
Snapshots from a scouting camera in northwest Nebraska captured the images of two cougar kittens feasting on the remains of a field-dressed deer in a remote, snow-covered Pine Ridge valley.
The Dec. 21 photographs came from a motion-sensitive camera set out northeast of Hay Springs by Tyler Hunter of Chadron, Neb.
“This is documentation that mountain lions are reproducing in this state for the first time in 100 years,'' said Sam Wilson at the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission's Lincoln headquarters.
Hunter's photographs aren't the first of mountain lion kittens in Nebraska, but they are part of a rare portfolio of photographic proof.
“We finally feel like we have enough evidence that we're not seeing a single female with a litter, but probably multiple females with multiple litters,'' said Wilson, Game and Parks' nongame mammal and furbearer manager.
The permanent return of a large predator that is a part of Nebraska's natural heritage isn't a simple matter. Wildlife biologists welcome them for their key role in the balance of a healthy ecosystem. The mountain lion also called cougar or puma generally avoids people, but some landowners and ranchers are wary.
While still a scarce species across the country, this new evidence of litters in Nebraska adds to a steadily growing list of adult sightings, some as far east as Omaha. A male cougar was captured in Omaha's Old Mill area in 2003.
Western Iowa also has had sightings of free-roaming mountain lions, but no reports of natural population.
Nebraska's cougar population has the attention of the State Legislature. Lawmakers passed a bill last week allowing landowners to shoot mountain lions that are preying on livestock or threatening people.
The mountain lion, a Nebraska native, was hunted as the state was settled and driven out by the end of the 1800s. Despite annual reports since the 1950s, no confirmed sighting was made in the state until 1991, when an adult female was shot by a hunter near Harrison.
There now have been 99 confirmed sightings in Nebraska, mostly in the Pine Ridge
region and elsewhere in the Panhandle. Many probably were the same animal seen in different places over several years, Wilson said.
The popularity of digital cameras strapped by hunters to trees or posts along game trails for scouting deer has produced a flurry of new photographs of mountain lions in Nebraska.
An infrared sensor triggers the camera shutter when something passes by. Usually it's a deer, raccoon or coyote but sometimes it's a mountain lion.
Wilson and other biologists long have said that the presence of female cougars in Nebraska is significant because they make it possible to have a breeding population. Those expectations were realized in recent years.
The first proof of young cougars in the state came in late February 2007, when Game and Parks officials recovered the carcass of a 6-month-old female hit by a vehicle as it followed an adult and two other cubs across U.S. Highway 20 east of Chadron.
A day earlier, however, images from a trail camera set out by Lincoln-based wildlife photographer Michael Forsberg in the hills east of Chadron showed two kittens and their mother. One kitten stopped to lick ice in a frozen creek. The other was close behind its mother.
About four months later, a male cub was killed crossing U.S. Highway 385 near Chadron State Park.
Wilson said no one knows if the killed kittens were part of the family Forsberg photographed.
The second sighting of cougar cubs was confirmed in December 2008 when Steve Masek, a Game and Parks conservation technician, captured an image of an adult and a cub at a deer carcass in the Pine Ridge.
There is no Nebraska hunting season for cougars, and this year's legislation clarified and put into law the Game and Parks guidelines for dealing with cougars.
If a mountain lion is not threatening people and has not killed or injured livestock, it is to be left undisturbed. The commission policy calls for killing mountain lions that have entered a community, killed livestock or threatened people.
The legislation's sponsor, State Sen. LeRoy Louden of Ellsworth, said ranchers needed a legal means to protect their livestock and families from threatening mountain lions. Sen. Cap Dierks of Ewing told of a big cat near his home and, another time, one that watched a haying crew.
Wilson said the goal is to eliminate problem animals while protecting the majority of cougars that avoid people and feed on deer and other game.
In Iowa, any mountain lion can be shot legally. They are not listed in state law as a designated wildlife species because they were considered extinct when the state's fish and game laws first were crafted. Recent efforts to add cougars as wildlife species have failed in the Iowa Legislature.
Most of Nebraska's mountain lions apparently are animals dispersing from a growing population in South Dakota's Black Hills region north of Chadron.
Neighboring Wyoming and Colorado also have rebounding cougar populations.
Mountain lions sighted in central and eastern Nebraska and in Iowa most likely are roaming young males seeking females and a new range.
“They're just passing through,'' Wilson said. “That's why we get random reports from across the rest of the state.''
No reproducing population is known to exist anywhere in the Midlands but in the Pine Ridge.
“They belong here,'' Wilson said, “because they're a native species.''
This post is for informational purposes only.
