The Arizona Chapter of SCI is proud to support the research team at Bobcats in Tucson.

Please see below for their updates from January 2024.

Bobcats in Tucson Project-January 2024 Update

The AZ Chapter of SCI (AZSCI) has been a strong partner in the Bobcats in Tucson (BIT) research project since its inception back in 2020. The BIT project is an AZ Game and Fish Heritage Fund project using lottery dollars to help wildlife. SCI was the first of the conservation groups to provide funds to expand the reach of the original project through providing more satellite collars and tracking time. It also helped cover costs of the DNA analysis to determine any kinship relationships of the captured bobcats. An overview of the project can be found at Bobcatsintucson.net.

The project will be winding up later in 2024. The project has already provided useful background information and will help inform urban bobcat conservation efforts. The project Team captured over 65 bobcats and of those, 56 were different bobcats. Collared bobcats have provided over 50,000 locations of habitat and movement use and continue to add hundreds of new locations weekly. If just straight-line measures between locations are added up, we have over 24,000 miles of bobcat movements We have documented home ranges from as little as 600 acres (on Starr Pass golf course) to over 15 square miles. We have documented females having and raising kittens in wild settings adjacent to urban development as well as backyards and roofs in high density urban developments. We have found that contrary to much common reporting, our bobcats may be more social than reported. We have documented several situations where females in our study actively share home ranges with daughters. Mortality factors seem to be dominated by losses due to vehicle strikes and human caused illegal killings, usually over misunderstood conflicts with urban pets or improperly caged domestic animals like chickens.

As part of the partnership with AZSCI, two of the captured bobcats were given the opportunity to provide names for two bobcats in the study. This makes it easier to communicate about the large number of bobcats captured than just using a number. We captured BC # 54 Teddy (Theodore Roosevelt) and BC# 55 Nala (Queen in Disney Lion King) in early December. Both bobcats are doing well and sending information daily. Teddy Hangs out around the Sweetwater Wetlands in the Santa Cruz River bottom. In the last two weeks he has moved 91.4 Km or 60 mi. He frequently crosses over Silverbell Rd. to utilize portions of his home range to the west where he was captured. Nala also uses the Santa Cruz River bottom to move up and down a 6.5-mile section from around Sunset Rd. up to Twin Peaks. Her preferred home range seems to fall only within the narrow Santa Cruz River corridor.

We would like to give a special thanks to AZSCI for their support of time and dollars. This support is just another example where the under appreciated conservation and sportsman community steps forward and shows its support for wildlife of all types. Bobcats have a strong future in the Tucson area because of dedicated support like this.

BIT Team