IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Johnson, K. | |
| The return of the great plains puma | |
| 2000 Endangered Species UPDATE (17): 108-114 | |
With the advent of European settlement over a century ago, the northern Great Plains became the site of extremely rapid landscape change. Most large mammals, including the wapiti or elk (_Cervus elephas_), bison (_Bison bison_), wolf (_Canis lupus_), puma (_Puma concolor_), grizzly bear (_Ursus arctos horribilus_), and black bear (_Ursus americanus_), were almost completely extirpated from wooded "island-like" habitats such as the Black Hills, the Pine Ridge Escarpment, and also from the mixed-grass prairies. Pumas likely persisted in very low densities within the Black Hills, which now constitutes the core breeding and dispersal ecoregion into adjacent biotically similar environments, including the Pine Ridge Escarpment, the Rawhide Buttes, and the Wildcat Hills. Limiting factors on puma numbers include fluctuating white-tailed deer (_Odocoileus virginianus_) and mule deer (_Odocoileus hemionus_) populations, and human and road densities. Rural landowners within the Greater Black Hills ecosystem may increasingly face the dilemma of balancing economic interests with federal and state laws designed to protect and reestablish these native carnivores. How farmers and ranchers resolve these land use issues has implications for other Great Plains states where carnivore dispersion is also taking place. If the Black Hills, the core habitat for the Great Plains puma can be preserved, along with riparian patch and peninsula corridors to adjacent forested buttes, the puma will once again take its place as a dominant carnivore in the Great Plains. |
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