Record now: the county's animals as they stand, November 2026

THE CLOSING CENSUS · AS OF NOVEMBER 2026

The leg closes where the Story of Granger section opened, with a survey — this one dated November 2026 and assembled from the record the articles above built. Restored and regulated, the four returns stand as managed populations: the deer a hunted herd in the hundreds of thousands statewide and an ordinary presence in both townships; the wild turkey in all ninety-two counties and in the Christmas census by the flock; the river otter protected in 1995 and trapped under quota since 2015, its modelled population above 8,500; the beaver in nearly every county, engineering the ditches its ancestors were trapped out of. The raptors stand recovered past their paperwork: the bald eagle off Indiana's special-concern list since 2020, nesting at St. Patrick's County Park since 2015 with sixteen eaglets on the nest's record; the osprey proposed for complete delisting in 2025 as a finished recovery; the peregrine nesting on the downtown towers since 2003, sixty-three young fledged through 2025. Gone for good on this ground: the bison — the state's only herds now are managed herds on other counties' ground, Kankakee Sands' among them, restored in 2016 and no kin to a wild presence here; the wolf, the panther, the prairie chicken and the passenger pigeon, Chapman's losses unrecovered. The bear stands between the columns, and at its exact size: a transient, not a resident — the young Michigan male confirmed in this county in June 2015, his scat identified by the Department's biologist, the first verified bear in Indiana since 1871 on the DNR's dating, last reported in the state on 13 October 2015, and euthanized by Michigan's DNR on 9 April 2016 after habituation; no resident bear population exists in Indiana as of this writing, and the county's bear record is one animal, one summer, fully documented. The census machinery runs on: the South Bend Christmas Count in its ninth decade, Potato Creek's list at 240 species, the Alliance's May Count beside them. In the water: zebra mussels established in the basin's lakes and streams; invasive carp absent from this river and from Lake Michigan, and watched by name at the river's mouth; Juday Creek's fish community mid-shift from stocked trout toward native bass under a watershed that is developing faster than its restored reaches can hold. Against Chapman's page of 1880, the county of November 2026 is poorer by its giants and its two great birds, richer than any year since 1900 in deer, turkey, otter, beaver and eagles — and still losing, quietly, the small cold creek at its center. That is the fauna record of this ground as the open record gives it, closed at November 2026.

Sources:

1. Assembled from the record of this section's articles: Indiana DNR restoration histories and status lists (deer, turkey, otter, beaver; eagle delisted 2020; osprey delisting proposal 2025; peregrine record to 2025); Chapman (1880) for the baseline; the invasive-carp and zebra-mussel record of the preceding article; the Juday Creek monitoring series (Shirey 2016; Notre Dame capstones 2022/2024).
2. Indiana DNR and Michigan DNR bear record, 2015–2016: the June 2015 St. Joseph County confirmation (scat identified by DNR biologist Budd Veverka), first verified Indiana bear since 1871; last in-state report 13 October 2015; euthanized in Michigan 9 April 2016.
3. The Nature Conservancy, Kankakee Sands bison herd (established 2016, Newton County): the state's managed herds stand on other ground — printed to close the bison's modern column honestly.
4. South Bend-Elkhart Bird Alliance: Potato Creek State Park, 240 recorded species; the Christmas Bird Count and May Count continuing.