The Return (of Lynx rufus, the Bobcat)

Amy E Kulesza

Guest Blogger

It was New Year’s Day, 1999, when I saw my first and only bobcat. My friends had rented a cabin in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, and although we had stayed up late ushering in the new year, I had woken early out of habit. Bundled up outside, I sat with my journal ready in hand, when a large cat with a stubby tail wandered into my view about 20 yards out. As it sauntered past, I was confused. A lost house cat? No. Distinctly a bobcat.

Over 25 years later, I still remember that stillness of the morning. The sunlight on the hillside and filtering through the trees. The short tail of the cat who couldn’t care less about the human sitting in the meadow by the cabin. It was one of those simply magical moments, in which time slowed as the cat made its way back out of view. But all these years later, I haven’t been lucky enough to see another one. So when I saw the post about a bobcat sighting last autumn at Prairie Oaks Metro Park on Metro Parks’ Instagram I was extremely excited.

Bobcats, Ohio’s only wild feline, Lynx rufus, were extirpated in Ohio by the mid 1800s, a result of European settlement. Today, they are making a roaring comeback, with sightings in most of Ohio’s 88 counties, but with most observations taking place in southern and southeastern Ohio.

On a mild Saturday afternoon in early February this year, about 105 folks gathered at the Highbanks Metro Park Nature Center to hear a talk about bobcats by Dr Shauna Weyrauch, a senior lecturer and ecologist/conservation biologist at OSU Newark. Although a winter storm was imminent and we would end up with over a foot of snow in central Ohio the next day, this particular Saturday was nice enough to bring out about those hundred folks or so, interested in learning from an expert in this field.

As settlers moved westward into Ohio years ago, they cleared land for homes and to grow food. According to Dr Weyrauch, by 1839 most trees were eliminated in Ohio, and along with the trees, the bobcats. Forests are important to bobcats, who use the cavities of trees for their dens. Other forest animals are critical as a food source. Most bobcat habitat had been lost by 1855, but hunting and trapping of bobcats for fur also contributed to the loss of bobcats in Ohio. Moreover, bobcats were perceived as a threat to people or their livestock. These two pressures of habitat loss and hunting drove the extirpation of bobcats in Ohio.

So you can imagine that one reason we are seeing more bobcats in Ohio today is the return of our forested habitat. In eastern Ohio, including Licking County, we are seeing the land recover from strip mining and farming. As we now have more secondary forest and grassland, bobcats move in to consume small to medium-size animals like mice, rabbits and squirrels. Ohio bobcats are opportunists, but they are also carnivores. Although it is possible for them to take a full-size deer, that could be a challenge for our smaller, 22-pound Ohio bobcat. Instead, they are most likely scavenging dead deer. According to ODNR, there is little evidence that bobcats eat larger birds like wild turkey, or many birds at all.

Dr Weyrauch was gracious enough to Zoom with me to follow up on her presentation. As bobcats return to Ohio, it is important to understand their impacts on other wildlife. For example, while the overpopulation of deer may have had a large impact on the decline of native Ohio wildflowers and understory vegetation, the bobcat appears to have little effect on other organisms. Dr Weyrauch called bobcats the “shepherds of the forest” as they help keep rabbit, raccoon and opossum populations in check. As Ohio’s apex predator (along with the coyote), bobcats play a key ecological role, and more research on bobcats is helping us better understand this role.

The return of bobcats has also been helped by the protections against trapping and hunting of them. This followed them being listed as an endangered species in the 1970s. Hunting can be an important component of wildlife management, however, for some species, like the bobcat, agencies take into consideration things like their reproductive capacity. Bobcats mate between February and May and they have about a two month gestation period. They will have two to three kittens in April to June, but only 25% to 33% of kittens survive. This lower survival rate impacts how quickly the population can grow, coupled with the amount of space and territory a single bobcat needs.

Since 2017, there have been roughly 400 to 500 confirmed sightings of bobcats per year in Ohio. Most of those sightings occurred in south and southeastern Ohio. According to ODNR, sightings are often via trail camera, or from road-kill. In the case of trail cams, which became popular in the mid to late 2000s, it’s not always easy to know if some cats have been double counted. It will be interesting to see how this number either levels off or continues to grow over time.

Between 2018 and 2022 Dr Weyrauch and Project Wild Coshocton set up trail cameras to determine patterns of bobcat occupancy over time, as well as animal behavior in eastern Ohio. Trail cameras have become an important research tool to help us better understand the presence and absence of species, as well as their behavior.

In our zoom conversation, Dr Weyrauch described her approach to using trail cameras in her sampling to best try and assess the presence of bobcats in a representative way. Many trail cam studies will place cameras randomly, in order not to bias the data, which makes sense from a scientific approach. However, the organism’s behavior must be taken into account, and bobcats often walk established trails. Since the goal here is to establish presence, and not necessarily density, placing cameras on established trails is a good strategy. Additionally, since bobcats are a good size animal, they are easier to pick up on camera. Timing is also an important consideration.

Bobcat research has shown that in eastern Ohio the female bobcats do not really overlap with other females, but they will overlap with males. A male bobcat needs about 16 square miles in eastern Ohio. The females need about a 6-square-mile territory. Because bobcats need space, they are often on the move. Therefore, the number one mortality is from road crossing, accounting for up to 18% of deaths.

Dr Weyrauch’s current work revolves around building bobcat dens and monitoring their use. These efforts are important for species conservation, because not only is understanding the basic ecology of bobcats important, but we also need to understand what makes one habitat better over another. Man-made dens could help in bobcat recovery and reestablishment in Ohio, and help researchers figure out other ways Ohioans can support their return.

I was lucky enough to see that beautiful bobcat on that New Year’s Day over 25 years ago. Hopefully you too will be lucky enough to see such a lovely animal. Maybe it will spark a little excitement and wonder for you as well as it did for me.