Looking for a lion

Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2022 5:52 pm

Rain slowly began to fall as Wildlife Biologist Kevin Blecha, technician Anna Markey and District Wildlife manager Clayton BonDurante waited for the mountain lion to enter the trap. Periodically Blecha rolled the truck window down, hoisting a telemetry antenna toward the night sky. His radio system searched for a beeping sound — a sign that the door had fallen on the trap and a lion would be inside. After the team baited a study site west of Gunnison, their trail camera captured a mountain lion feeding on the elk carcass (CPW uses roadkill for bait) around midnight on Monday. The animal covered the bait with dirt and leaves to prevent avian scavengers from discovering it during the day — a sign that the big cat would return to feed a second time. On Tuesday night, Blecha and his crew set a trap and waited for the lion’s return.

“If this was a lottery, this would be a Powerball,” Blecha said. The goal was to place a GPS radio collar on the mountain lion, as well as tags to help biologists study the species’ population density and range on the Western Slope. Colorado Parks and Wildlife is entering its second year of the density study. Gunnison was selected for this year's study in the Southwest region, where Blecha leads the project. He has collared about 15 mountain lions, only 10 away from his goal. “We're trying to estimate population size,” Blecha said. “To do that we need to get a bunch of them marked, at least for lions. We don't need to do that with other critters always, but lions are so secretive and we have to resort to these other more difficult means, which is capturing individuals one at a time.” The clock slowly moved toward midnight, but the trap remained empty and Markey and BonDurante headed back to Gunnison. Blecha stayed to wait. The cat finally entered the trap around 2:30 a.m., a couple of hours after the photographer went to bed.

Clayton BonDurante sets up the trigger line. When the door falls it activates a transmitter on a radio collar, alerting the team that a mountain lion is in the trap.

Kevin Blecha baits the trap with a piece of an elk carcass. The rest of the bait was removed from the site.

Anna Markey pulls hair out of an elk carcass that was placed to attract mountain lions to the site. The hair, along with dirt and leaves, hide the bottom of the metal cage and help mask human scent.