Nebraska Game and Parks says a mountain lion was killed Saturday when it was hit by a vehicle about 2 miles west of Alliance. The driver was not injured.

Game and Parks Furbearer/Carnivore Program Manager Sam Wilson says the driver reported the incident with both Alliance police and a social media post from the driver placing the accident on West Otoe Road

Wilson says the mountain lion was young, a “dispersing-age male” apparently looking for his own area.

The big cat had not been tagged or marked by Game and Parks as part of the agency’s mountain lion research project.

Mountain lions were native to the Panhandle, but had been killed off by the early 1900s after homesteaders developed most areas of the state.

The first confirmed report of a cougar back in Nebraska came in 1991 with sightings and encounters more common as a permanent population established itself in the Pine Ridge.