There are two species of small "wildcats," bobcat and lynx, inhabiting forests of North America. Bobcats occur from southern Canada southward into Central America, whereas the range of lynx extends from the northern United States and in the Rockies northward into Canada and Alaska.
Bobcats are solitary and widely distributed, so only a few thousand bobcats are found in Pennsylvania. Lynx presumably occurred in Pennsylvania until about the mid-1850s, but now occur only in Maine in the Northeast.
Bobcats and lynx are comparable in size (15 to 35 pounds), being about twice the size of domestic cats, although lynx are slightly larger than bobcats. Both species have very short tails, and lynx have densely furred footpads that act as "snowshoes" while walking or hunting in deep snow.
Bobcats have black-spotted brown fur, which blends well with dense brushy vegetation and rocky outcrops in deciduous forests. (Little known biological fact: A bobcat can change its spots -- when it gets tired of one spot, it just moves to another.) Lynx are brownish-gray without spots, which provide camouflage in dense coniferous forests and swamps.
Since bobcats and lynx are relatively small, prey consists mainly of cottontail rabbits and snowshoe hares, but also smaller prey (like mice) or larger prey (like deer). (A second little known biological fact: When the mother bobcat goes out to hunt food, it says to her cubs, "Let us prey.")
Historically, large charismatic carnivores, such as gray (timber) wolves and mountain lions, were hunted until extirpated by the 20th Century in much of eastern North America. But bobcat and lynx populations were not subject to this relentless level of exploitation.
Yet over the last century or so, abundance and distribution of both bobcats and lynx were reduced appreciably with loss of forest to agricultural, industrial and urban land uses subsequent to European settlement.
Besides habitat loss, bounties were a factor negatively affecting populations. Bounties were paid on bobcats, beginning in 1727 in Massachusetts, and continuing in many states during the 19th and early 20th centuries; by the 1960s and 1970s, bounties on bobcats were eliminated in most states.
Public concern for carnivores began to change around the 1970s from indifference toward predators to considerable interest and support for their conservation. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protected gray wolves and other threatened and endangered carnivores.
In the mid-1970s, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) prohibited trade of the pelts of many large endangered cats in the world, such as leopards. As a result, unprotected populations of bobcats in North America became an alternative source of pelts on the international trade market. For instance, prior to the CITES ruling, only about 10,000 to 36,000 bobcats per year were harvested (hunted or trapped) in the United States from 1967 to 1976. But when the market and price of bobcat pelts increased during the late 1970s, over 86,000 bobcats were being harvested annually (today, the number of bobcats harvested is about 34,000, based on figures from 1995 to 1996.
Increased harvests of bobcats in North America during the late 1970s led to a major shift in the conservation philosophy for this species. Wildlife biologists immediately became concerned that this species would be over harvested. Also, CITES ruled in 1975 that countries harvesting and exporting bobcat pelts must determine if these activities negatively affect bobcat populations.
Today, bobcats can be harvested in 38 states, but are completely protected in nine. They are state endangered in Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey and Ohio and state threatened in Illinois.
We can attribute the success of bobcat conservation to swift action by wildlife biologists that began in the late 1970s. This "wildcat" has been able to coexist near humans because of its secretive and solitary existence. We can be fairly confident that bobcats will remain as an aesthetic component in forest or brushy habitats of Pennsylvania (or on campus when the Northwestern Wildcats visit Penn State for athletic events) well into the 21st Century.
