GF&P: Lions still healthy

By Ryan Woodard, Journal staff | Tuesday, February 06, 2007

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South Dakota Game Fish & Parks officials still consider the general health of Black Hills mountain lions to be good, despite a few recent health scares with blind and emaciated cats.

“I would say that our lions are very healthy like any species of animal — or even people. A percentage of them are going to get sick,” GF&P regional supervisor Mike Kintigh said.

Kintigh said the testing and monitoring of lions has produced little concern for the health of the animals — other than two incidents of blindness that occurred last year.

GF&P officials had to euthanize two blind lions in 2006, and South Dakota State University researchers were called on to do an analysis. Only the eyes were sent from the first lion, a 5-year-old emaciated female cat found July 7 wandering near Nemo Road.

But a necropsy was performed on the other lion, a 7- to 9-year-old blind female big cat that was found and euthanized Nov. 8 in Custer State Park.

SDSU researchers found chlamydia (which is not a sexually transmitted disease in lions, but a respiratory disease) to be a possibility in that lion.

However, Kintigh said chlamydia has not been confirmed in the animal. He said researchers need another sample before they are able to confirm the existence of the disease.

The eyes of each lion the GF&P comes into contact with — either a problem lion that is removed or a lion that is tagged — are now swabbed for chlamydia, GF&P biologist John Kanta said.

GF&P officials will have to obtain more test subjects for the disease to discover whether chlamydia was present in the blind lion.

Kanta said a whole battery of tests is also run on the lions to make sure they are healthy. Serum from the blood of the cats is sent to SDSU for further research, he said.

He said the lions are tested for a whole range of diseases, such as feline leukemia, feline AIDS and other possible diseases.

“Pretty much the whole gamut — anything they’ve discovered that can possibly occur in mountain lions,” he said.

Kanta said none of the test results has come back with anything to cause concern — other than the lion that may have had chlamydia.

“I don’t have any concerns about the health of our lions right now,” Kanta said.

He also said that lion samples are sent to both the SDSU lab and a lab at Colorado State University.

That increases the GF&P’s confidence in the results, he said.

“They run different tests, and they’re looking at them in a different way,” he said. “I think that will just make us more confident in the results.”

Custer veterinarian Dr. Sharon Senezcko said she has a few concerns about the lions in the Black Hills and whether there are any diseases out there “lurking.”

“The majority of the population is probably healthy,” she said. “I am concerned there might be something lurking we need to look into.”

Senezcko said it is important to look at feline viral diseases, which she deals with in house cats — diseases such as feline immunodeficiency virus, chlamydia, feline leukemia, rabies and the plague. However, she said, only the plague and rabies can be spread to humans.

Care must be taken in skinning animals, because the plague or rabies can spread to humans that way, she said. Although mountain lions in Wyoming have been infected with the plague, Kintigh said, no cases have come up in South Dakota lions.

Senezcko said she is curious as to what area of the blind cat’s eyes were infected, because whether the retina, cornea or lens is infected can make a difference in what kind of disease issues are dealt with.

She said the issues of blindness and other lions whose causes of death are unknown indicate that there may be more diseases among lions than originally believed.

“There (are) enough curious things that have happened that I think we need to look into it a little closer,” she said.

Kintigh said the monitoring of the health of Black Hills lions is an “ongoing process” and one that he believes will catch any infectious diseases that the lions may have.

“We’re running a pretty good screening process,” he said. “We’ve got feelers out touching a pretty wide range. If anything shows up, we’re going to catch it, and we’ll focus our tests in and make a further determination.”

Contact Ryan Woodard at 394-8412 or ryan.woodard@rapidcityjournal.com