|
BY DAVID HENDEE
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER Published Tuesday November 25, 2008 A mountain lion killed by a deer hunter in northwest Nebraska was a rare specimen. It was female.
A 16-year-old boy shot and killed the 97-pound female cat when it appeared on a game trail and — showing no fear — approached within 15 steps of the hunter Saturday, according to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.
The boy, who wasn’t identified, was in a group of hunters on U.S. Forest Service land south of Chadron.
The adult cougar is only the fourth confirmed female in Nebraska during the last century, said Sam Wilson, the Game and Parks mountain lion expert in Lincoln.
“If you don’t have female mountain lions in Nebraska, you don’t have a population in Nebraska,” Wilson said Monday. “This one is significant.”
The rocky, forested Pine Ridge, where the big cat was shot, is ideal cougar habitat. Most of Nebraska’s 56 confirmed cougar sightings since 1991 — some of them duplicates — were in northwest Nebraska between Chadron and Harrison. The region is immediately south of a growing population of mountain lions in South Dakota’s Black Hills.
* Contact the writer: 444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2798&u_sid=10497264
——-
Learn more about big cats and Big Cat Rescue at http://bigcatrescue.org
|
Hunter kills female mountain lion in northwest Nebraska
Help Feed Big Cats
One of the best ways to help is through general donations that can be used however it is most needed at the time.To make a general donation just click the Donate Now button below. This is the best way to give as it has the lowest credit card processing fees and is immediate help for the cats.
If you prefer to donate via Pay Pal, please use this link: Pay Pal
