When a state Game, Fish & Parks Department officer killed a 9-month-old mountain lion in Spearfish last Sunday, it was the 96th confirmed lion mortality this year. That is already a yearly record in GF&P lion statistics, with more than four months to go in 2012.
And if confirmed lion deaths continue as they did in 2011, the 2012 total is likely to be between 115 and 120 for the year. Just 15 years ago, in 1997, the total for the year was zero.
Statistics on cougar deaths kept by GF&P since 1996 — a year when just one dead cougar was recorded — show the dramatic growth of South Dakota’s mountain lion population, almost all of which lives in the Black Hills region. They also make it easier to understand how the big cats and their predatory ways have become such a point of controversy. There were signs of what was coming by 2002, when the lion mortality count reached 10. It hit 25 in 2004, the year before the state GF&P Commission established the first sport-hunting season on lions. Read more….