Once considered locally extinct but now boasting a resilient population growth since their recent resurgence, the bobcat is making a comeback in Ohio.
As settlers moved in and deforested the area, the bobcat lost much of its natural habitat. Now, even though the Buckeye State is less than half as forested today as it was when settlers moved in, forest sizes and bobcat populations are on the rise.
“Bobcats are coming back on their own as the forests do,” said Suzie Prange, a wildlife research biologist for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. “It’s a good thing.”
The carnivorous cat was on Ohio’s first endangered species list in 1974, but it has made such a rebound that state biologists are considering removing its current “threatened species” status, according to the department.
The Ohio Wildlife Council, a state panel of biologists, will be voting in early April to change the status, according to the release.
The cats’ comeback largely results from a host of factors: increased forestland, decreased pollution and no major diseases threatening the species, Prange said.
Hunting from humans will not be one of those threats, as the species will have no legal hunting season, Prange said.
The 10-30 pound cats are not known to attack pets or humans, Prange said.
“They’re really shy … It’s even hard to see them,” Prange said.
After conducting a diet study of the animals’ stomachs, Prange said she found no evidence of domestic pets being hunted by bobcats.
Scientists like Prange track bobcats mostly through finding and recording road kill, but trail cameras have also led to the increasing of confirmed sightings of the species.
Originally, Prange was worried the increasing number of sightings was distorted by new technology — about four years ago trail cameras overtook road kill as the number one source of bobcats’ confirmed sightings — but the number of confirmed sightings has gone up significantly even when trail camera sightings are factored out.
Bobcat hotspots include many parts of Noble, Monroe, Washington, Belmont, Muskingum and other Southeastern Ohio counties.
One place bobcats are for sure at, nevertheless, is Athens.
“We do have bobcats in Athens County,” Prange said. “They are throughout the southeast part of the state. We get road kills in Athens every year.”
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