Research overview: the Black Hills as a cougar dispersal source

The Black Hills of South Dakota host a recovering cougar population that has become a documented source of long-distance dispersers spreading eastward across the Great Plains. This overview synthesizes telemetry, genetic, and mortality evidence showing that juvenile males in particular leave the Black Hills and travel enormous distances through largely unsuitable, fragmented habitat in search of territory and mates. Some have reached Midwestern states and, in the most famous case, Connecticut. The overview discusses how this dispersal underpins the slow, halting natural recolonization of former puma range and why female dispersal, which is far more limited, is the bottleneck preventing new breeding populations from establishing. The Black Hills case illustrates source-sink dynamics and the geography of carnivore range expansion.