“And the second thing is we want to find out if it is a female, was she reproductively active in the last year? And if so, how big was that litter that she might have had.” We want to know how old the animal is when it died to estimate survival based on that age information,” Tucker said. “For my purposes, when creating a population model, there’s really two important pieces of information. While Tucker and staff can learn a number of things about an animal through a necropsy, what’s vital is to understand if the population of the furbearer on the examination table is increasing or decreasing. “Mountain lions, bobcats, river otters and fishers are four of the species of furbearers in North Dakota that we require hunters and trappers to relinquish the carcass to us after the pelt has been removed,” Tucker said, “and we’re just using that necropsy to collect some very basic demographic and reproductive information about the animals so that we can survey them.” Game and Fish manages many of these furbearer species through necropsies, which is basically autopsies on animals. “We need some way to monitor those populations and ensure that our hunting and trapping seasons are either having the impact or not having the impact depending on what our population management goals are for that species.” “And that is especially important if we have an open hunting or trapping season on that animal,” she added. So, we have to come up with other ways to survey the populations and monitor those population trends. “Which means we can’t drive around and count them or even go up in an airplane and count them. “They have really low densities on the landscape, they have huge home ranges, they’re nocturnal and very secretive even when they’re moving about during the day,” said Stephanie Tucker, North Dakota Game and Fish Department game management section leader. Mountain lions are an interesting study to explain how wildlife managers look at these unique North Dakota species. While upland and big game have years of sampling and confident means through live surveys over decades, lower populations and the discreet behavior require biologists to utilize other means to survey some furbearers. No matter the designation, these smaller yet intriguing species create a unique discussion with population assessment. These more recent additions to hunting and trapping require close monitoring of populations to ensure a sustainable harvest and population. Maybe it fits best when considering new seasons for other furbearers like river otters and fishers, which were added more recently. It is new compared to deer, grouse and pheasants or ducks and geese. It puts into context the label of “new” or “experimental” when describing one of the more recent additions to legal take in our state. To think there’s a generation that has grown up never knowing a time when there wasn’t a season. It’s been nearly 20 years since the first legal mountain lion season in North Dakota.
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