Approaching a caged bobcat can be a terrifying experience. The animals that weigh under 30 pounds make a sound far more fearsome than you might expect, but Nicole Gorman isn’t afraid. She’s a graduate student, doing her dissertation on these small but feisty predators. Over the last year she and her team have set up traps and cameras in 28 locations between the Shenandoah National Park and Charlottesville.
“There’s a really healthy bobcat population in Albemarle County,” Gorman concludes.
The scientists have sedated their subjects and fitted them with GPS collars – then watched as the cats traveled great distances to find food and mates.
“All of them disperse from their mother’s home range after about a year, so they all take at least one semi-long journey in their life," Gorman explains. "I’ve had them go over 100 miles before. A lot of large males have really large territories -- 20-40 square miles.”
And they’re excellent climbers.
“I’ve retrieved a collar from 60 feet in a tree before,” she recalls.
Her team managed to catch 16 subjects – giving them a sedative, then recording their weight, markings and other data. Gorman says studying bobcats is a challenge.
“The more human activity they live around the more nocturnal they’ll become, just to avoid being seen," Gorman explains.
She’ll continue to track the animals via GPS for the next year, then produce maps that could help planners create and protect wildlife corridors to keep bobcats safe from their number one threat. Over the course of the study, two of them were hit and killed by cars.
