NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/440846
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2015 • NEBRASKAland 35 By Justin Haag H istory tells us that the presence of mountain lions in Nebraska is nothing new. Just how many of them in past centuries roamed the land that has become the Cornhusker State remains much a mystery. Cougars certainly were present in the region prior to settlers and market hunters extirpating various species of wildlife in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Historians and biologists expect they were likely restricted to steep or forested areas where they could escape from wolves – which were the dominant predator of the Great Plains. The big cats also prefer heavy cover for hiding and stalking their prey. Even today, the elusive nature of the animal makes population estimates a challenge. Because Native Americans and European settlers certainly weren't employing science such as DNA analysis from scat surveys, we're left only to conjecture from writings and tales from the period. Before and during European settlement of Nebraska, encounters were sometimes, albeit rarely, documented. Sam Wilson, manager of the Commission's carnivore and furbearer program, has collected a number of historical accounts that point to the presence of cougars. In the 1964 book Mammals of Nebraska, author Knox Jones Jr. identified a dozen locations from the Pine Ridge eastward to the Missouri River Valley, in which historical records of mountain lions existed. For instance, his research shows that a female nursing two kittens was killed in the Pine Ridge north of Hay Springs in the winter of 1884. News accounts from the period may have been prone to brevity and exaggeration, but stories of cougar encounters can be found in yellowed newspapers. A one-sentence description from the Sioux County Herald in 1886, for instance, tells of a 230-pound mountain lion (huge by any standards) being killed near O'Neill. A one-paragraph story from the same publication a year later tells the following story of a cougar being killed in Sheridan County by Wm. Long, about two and a half miles south of Rushville along a road on a creek, noting "The beast measured about nine feet from nose to the tip of the tail." James Hanson of Chadron, a renowned historian of the fur trade, notes that records of commerce from St. Louis, "where almost all furs from the region passed," have scant evidence of cougar pelts in the fur trade during the 1800s. However, the scarcity of cougars in those records might not be directly related to their abundance, particularly if they weren't highly sought after by fur traders who spent their energies pursuing more plentiful and lucrative pelts such as that of the beaver. How many cougars roamed the Plains of yesteryear will surely remain a mystery. What we do know is that the big cats have returned, making plenty of headlines and history these days, and will surely be studied by future generations. ■ Mountain Lion Mystery: The Population of Yesteryear as the appropriate agency to set hunting seasons, so it was our responsibility to weigh the evidence and make a decision. But we also understood that any decision we made about mountain lion hunting would be controversial, because people have a wide range of views about how large carnivores should be managed, and emotions can run high. Our job is to find the most reasonable middle ground to protect the species' long-term persistence in the state while allowing some appropriate level of hunting opportunity along the way. Mountain lions have been hunted in most western states for a long time, so we were able to examine a number of published studies about how populations respond to different levels of harvest. South Dakota had also amassed a lot of excellent data from hundreds of radio-collared lions in the Black Hills about harvest rates, as well as birth and death rates that was very useful. We know populations in our Pine Ridge and the Black Hills are well-connected by immigrating individuals, so the South Dakota studies were particularly relevant. This, coupled with the population estimates from our Pine Ridge scat surveys (see sidebar, page 33), and other local data we collected, gave us enough information to make a solid, science-based recommendation. We also listened to public input to help identify the appropriate middle ground for our specific objectives. When taking into account the proposed objectives as well as public input, the decision was made to maintain lion populations where they currently occurred, but to slightly reduce their numbers. Given that this was our inaugural hunting season, we added several safeguards to minimize the chance of unexpected consequences. First, we closed the Wildcat Hills and central Niobrara River Valley to hunting, because it appeared breeding populations were emerging there, but we lacked the data to calculate an appropriate harvest. Next, we established a strict quota of no more than two females that could be harvested in the Pine Ridge. We know the harvest of adult females has more potential to affect short-term birth t t Q: How did the Commission decide what kind of hunting season was appropriate?