Red Car Property: Last Summer's Bobcat Traveled A Long Way

Photo: Jonathan Vandiveer, July 13, 2015.  On an early morning run, Vandiveer was the first to document a bobcat on the Red Car Property.  (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Miguel Ordeñana, wildlife biologist with LA County Natural History Museum (NMH) writes in the Nature at NHM blog, that the cat with the possible color combination of ear tags was originally either trapped and tagged by researchers near the LA Zoo in Griffith Park or west of the 101 Freeway in the Santa Monica Mountains.  It came from quite a ways away to get to the Red Car Property. 

Photo: Jonathan Vandiveer, July 13, 2015.  The bobcat was camera shy and jumped into a tree to avoid Vandiveer's iPhone.

Another first: about a month after Vandiveer's bobcat encounter, Ordeñana captured video footage with a remote "camera trap" of a bobcat with no ear tags in Elysian Park.  See the video, photos and read the story about bobcats living in our increasingly fragmented urban open space and backyards in Silver Lake and Elysian Park: Backyard Bobcats of LA.

Ordeñana also makes the point, studying elusive urban bobcats is not possible without the help of "citizen scientists."  If you see a bobcat, take photos and and email them to nature@nhm.org with time, date and location, or post them to:
http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/backyard-bobcats