Lion makes epic trip from Canada to Montana

A young mountain lion has traveled 450 miles from southeastern British Columbia to the Helena Valley in Montana in a journey that’s not unprecedented but still rare, especially for a female cat, wildlife biologists say.

The cat, called Sandy after the creek where she was captured and collared nine months ago, appears to have settled in east of Helena along the Missouri River after crossing the U.S.-Canada border, the mountainous Continental Divide and the prairie west of Great Falls.

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But biologists continue to track her movements today.

“We’re really surprised to see this kind of movement from a female cougar,” said Patrick Stent, a wildlife biologist for the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource. “It’s just not common. Males are known to wander pretty far.”

Mountain lion experts say the cross-country travel of the female lion is another example of how little people really know about wildlife and their far-flung movements. In its epic road trip, the young lion regularly traveled through forested shelterbelts around farms and ranches, unbeknownst to people living there.

The trip also demonstrates how GPS technology is allowing today’s researchers to tag along for the ride, learning about the movements of wildlife and preferred habitat.

“It’s interesting, when you start to collar animals, what you learn,” said Jay Kolbe, an area wildlife biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks based in White Sulphur Springs studying mountain lions. He also is following the lion’s movements.

In March, the 2-year-old Canadian cat was captured and fitted with a GPS collar close to Sand Creek south of Cranbrook.

That’s a community of about 20,000 people in southeastern British Columbia 65 miles north of the Montana-Canada border.

The lion was one of three lions the agency decided to collar and track after they showed up in populated areas to prey on urban deer. Wildlife managers wanted to find out if they were a threat to public safety.

The 2-year-old cougar weighs about 90 pounds, a bit on the small side.

“In about May, she started making a big movement to the south,” Stent said.

The first month she was tracked, Sandy hung around in the Bull River area 20 miles southeast of Cranbrook, displaying normal cougar behavior such as preying on white-tailed deer.

The GPS collar sends out the cat’s locations once a day. Biologists in Canada and FWP monitor its movements online.

“It’s fascinating,” FWP’s Kolbe said of tracking animals using GPS. “We’re able to not just know the animal made the move, but because the points are so accurate and there’s so many collection points along the route, we can actually look at the habitat types they chose to move through.”

For many years, Kolbe studied Canada lynx in the Seeley Lake area of Montana. One lynx made a long trip to the same area where the lion that’s now in Montana was collared.

GPS technology is the only way to track those kinds of travels, he said.

“There’s a lot going on out there we’re not aware of,” Kolbe said.

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By June 11, about three months after Sandy was collared in British Columbia, she had crossed the United States-Canada border into Montana.

She continued moving south toward the northwestern Montana city Whitefish, 60 miles south of the border.

Whitefish is west of the Continental Divide, separating western Montana from the central and eastern regions of the state.

The mountains did not stop the lion.

“Then she headed east and crossed the Rocky Mountains,” Stent said.

The lion reached the Continental Divide by following the Middle Fork of the Flathead River and crossing the divide near the river’s headwater tributaries.

On July 20, she passed the Teton Pass Ski Area in Lewis and Clark National Forest northwest of Choteau, which is 165 miles from Whitefish.

On July 26, she was east of the mountains near the community of Choteau, where the plains meet the mountains.

Soon Sandy was on the plains, almost to Interstate 15 just west of Great Falls.

“We were pretty concerned she was going to start preying on cattle when she got to the plains,” Stent said. “Cougars tend to get into trouble when they get into that kind of system.”

One interesting note about the cat’s eastward venture onto the plains was she spent a fair bit of time in forested shelterbelts close to houses.

“We think she was using these areas for cover as it’s very open country for a lion,” Stent said. “It is really common for lions to be living close to residences and go undetected.”

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Around Aug. 1, British Columbia officials thought the cat’s traveling was over when they received a “mortality signal” near Fairfield, 35 miles west of Great Falls, which is known as the “Malting Barley Capital of the World.”

A mortality signal is sent automatically when the collar has not moved for 12 hours.

The mortality signal was emanating from a shelterbelt on private property.

Wildlife biologists in British Columbia assumed the cat had been shot and asked a FWP biologist in Great Falls to check the shelterbelt.

There was no sign of the cougar.

“So we think she just took a very long nap and her collar went into this mortality mode,” Stent said.

On Aug. 3, Sandy was on the move again, retracing her footsteps west until she hit the mountains near the Deep Canyon Guest Ranch northwest of Choteau.

Then the lion took a big turn south before traveling east toward Helena and then east of the capital city.

“And that’s where she is today,” Stent said this week.

Based on GPS signals, the cat is moving moving back and forth in the same area of the Missouri River, an indication she may establishing a home range.

“She seems pretty established,” Stent said.

As a crow flies, the distance between the location the lion was collared in Canada and where she is now is 300 miles.

Including the jaunt east onto the plains, Sandy had actually traveled 450 miles.

“The only thing we can think of is she’s a young cat, and she’s just looking for her own territory,” Stent said of the surprising distance the cat moved.

It’s more common for males to travel long distances, Stent said.

Biologists are monitoring the mountain lion and watching where she’ll go next.

Montana’s lion population is estimated at 3,500 to 4,000, but that’s being updated in a statewide mountain lion management plan that Kolbe is writing. The plan, he said, will apply groundbreaking research that’s occurred in Montana on mountain lion ecology to management.

“It’s a rare movement,” FWP’s Kolbe said of the mountain lion’s trip from southeastern British Columbia to the Missouri River in Montana. “It’s by no means unprecedented.”

Other examples of lions traveling hundreds of miles, especially males, have been documented, including mountain lions in central Montana moving to the Dakotas and vice versa, he said.

“For example, we’re starting to see lions show up in eastern seaboard states, and they traveled a long ways to get there,” Kolbe said.

It turns out Sandy isn’t the only lion from the Cranbrook area to cross into the United States.

A second mountain lion, this one collared 80 miles north of Cranbrook near Invermere, is now in the Yaak River drainage in northwestern Montana, Stent said.

It didn’t travel as far as the cat now east of Helena. It’s also a female.