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KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 February 12, 2016 \u2013 Reports of bobcat sightings have been on the increase in southern New England in recent years, but little is known about their population numbers, habitat use and prey in the region. So a team of researchers from the 溏心vlog免费B站 and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management has undertaken a five-year effort to trap and track bobcats to better understand their ecology.<\/p>\n
The scientists, led by 溏心vlog免费B站 Professor Thomas Husband and RIDEM Wildlife Biologist Charles Brown, captured one bobcat at 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s East Farm in November and fitted it with a GPS collar that enables the researchers to track its movements every day for about a year.<\/p>\n
According to Brown, the collar collects data on the bobcat\u2019s location every two hours. It also transmits a signal to a hand-held receiver, allowing the researchers to follow it from a distance. When the researchers get within 100 yards of the animal, they can download the GPS data, which they do every week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bobcat is wandering a lot farther than we expected,\u201d said Brown. \u201cWe\u2019ve tracked him to Snug Harbor, Bonnet Shores, Matunuck, Charlestown. We\u2019ve lost track of him for a few days at a time as he wanders, but we always catch up to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bobcats are the most widely distributed feline in North America, where they live in deserts, mountains, prairies and coastal regions. Weighing up to 35 pounds, they eat a wide variety of small mammals and other prey. In Rhode Island they are believed to consume mostly rabbits, squirrels and rodents.<\/p>\n
The animals have been sighted in nearly every community in mainland Rhode Island. The hotspots seem to be in South Kingstown, Westerly and Foster, but they are also known to travel through densely populated areas of Cranston, Warwick and West Warwick.<\/p>\n
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溏心vlog免费B站 Research Associate Amy Gottfried Mayer is responsible for the day-to-day monitoring of the collared bobcat, as well as for ongoing efforts to capture additional bobcats in box traps. She maintains up to 10 traps distributed in the southern portions of South Kingstown, which she baits with dead ducks, rabbits, squirrels and other animals. She opens the traps every Monday, checks them each weekday morning, then closes the traps on Friday.<\/p>\n
Mayer said the animals are turning out to be very difficult to trap. She uses a variety of visual and scent lures to attract the animals to the trap, but so far just the one animal has entered and been captured. Yet she knows that bobcats have come close.<\/p>\n
At each trap, a motion-sensing camera takes pictures of any animal that approaches. At one site the camera recorded three young bobcats sniffing the trap, while two different adult bobcats were photographed at another trap. The collared bobcat has also been photographed at a trap. And one bobcat even put its head and foot in a trap. But no others have entered the trap completely.<\/p>\n
Brown says that it is difficult to get a bobcat to enter a confined space, but he believes that their hesitancy to enter the traps also has a great deal to do with the weather.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe weather has been warm this winter, so they probably have easy access to food,\u201d he said. \u201cThey haven\u2019t reached the point yet when they\u2019re really hungry. I think we\u2019ll have better luck in harsh weather when it\u2019s harder for them to find prey. But for now we\u2019ll just do our best to keep the traps visually appealing.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say that the traps haven\u2019t caught anything. Mayer has released gray foxes, fishers, a red-tailed hawk and several opossums from the traps, but no more bobcats. She and Brown have even reached out to trappers and other bobcat researchers to learn their favorite capture techniques, but still to no avail.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll keep playing around with the traps, experimenting with different lures and set-ups,\u201d Mayer concluded. \u201cWe know they\u2019re here, so we\u2019ll just keep on trying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shown above:<\/p>\n
1. A bobcat next to a trap set by researchers to capture, then track local bobcats. (Courtesy of Amy Gottfried Mayer.)<\/p>\n
2. 溏心vlog免费B站 Research Associate Amy Gottfried Mayer checks a bobcat trap. (Photo by Todd McLeish)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 February 12, 2016 \u2013 Reports of bobcat sightings have been on the increase in southern New England in recent years, but little is known about their population numbers, habitat use and prey in the region. So a team of researchers from the 溏心vlog免费B站 and the Rhode Island Department of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58031,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}