The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
As of the check date, 11 November 2026 · Run B #226
The closing ledger, species by species, at the size the record supports and no larger: Gone, with no return of record: the bison (Chapman, driven westward by 1880); the elk (Chapman's gone-list; statewide extirpated, no St. Joseph County return record); the gray wolf (eliminated statewide by the contested 1908/late-1800s dating of item 3; no population); the panther/mountain lion (extirpated by the late 1800s; no breeding population; no county confirmation); the prairie chicken (state's last confirmed bird, 3 April 1972); the passenger pigeon (extinct 1914). Gone as residents, visited since: the black bear — extirpated by 1850, last confirmed 1871, one Michigan male confirmed in this county June–October 2015 and euthanized in Michigan in April 2016; no resident population. Returned and established, state frame with county presence: white-tailed deer (restocked from 1934; northern counties substantially from Michigan immigration; now every county); wild turkey (2,795 released 1956–2004; now all 92 counties); river otter (303 released 1995–1999; delisted 2005 — but see the 2009 printing flagged at item 4; trapped under quota since 2015); beaver (Wisconsin pairs, 1935; now almost every county). Returned as nesters, county frame: bald eagle (first successful county nests, 2015, Potato Creek and St. Patrick's; the ND-LEEF nest active and camera-watched since, 16 eaglets in 11 years by 2026); osprey (Potato Creek, four pairs in 2015, then the state's densest concentration; river pairs at South Bend); peregrine falcon (South Bend Tower Building site, nesting attempted 2003, 21st year in 2024). Listed and watched: lake sturgeon, state-endangered, not documented on this reach in any record reached; Indiana bat, bald eagle (at plan date) and eastern massasauga carried as the Baugo watershed's species of concern in the 2004 watershed plan. Arrived: zebra mussel, listed for the St. Joseph River in this county on the DNR list updated 12 January 2026. At the gate, not arrived: bighead and silver carp — one eDNA positive in June 2023, clean resample that September, no live fish known in the basin. The counted frame: the South Bend and Elkhart Christmas Bird Count circles bracket the township east and west; the town itself sits outside the South Bend circle's radius, and no heron rookery of record stands on this ground. The habitat ground under all of it is the county park at the town's edge — Ferrettie/Baugo Creek County Park, 214 acres, its 50 acres of marsh and island habitat and its Baugo Creek corridor told whole in the Parks leg — the one place on this ground where the modern record and the animals meet at management strength. Everything above is stated as of 11 November 2026, from the records named in the articles of this section; where the record was a search rather than a document, the article says so.
Sources: The articles of this section and their sources, consolidated: Chapman (1880), Ch. II; Indiana DNR animal, fish and invasive-species records as cited at items 3, 4, 7, 8 and 10 (including the Zebra Mussel Waters list updated 12 Jan. 2026); Indiana DNR news releases 2015 (bear; eagles); Audubon CBC record as cited at item 9; Baugo Creek Watershed Management Plan (2004) as cited at item 6; Parks leg of this build (Ferrettie/Baugo Creek County Park, 214 acres, marsh and island habitat). Check date: 11 November 2026.