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Researcher tracks bobcats on long-distance journeys |
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Sunday, January 15, 2012 12:41 |
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Photo by Jesse Lewis via the Boulder Daily Camera
By LAURA SNIDER, BOULDER DAILY CAMERA
Last March, "M17" -- an adult male bobcat who was captured, fitted with a GPS collar and released by researchers the month before -- did a peculiar thing.
The animal had been hanging out just west of Boulder, roaming the foothills from Lee Hill Drive south to Boulder Canyon, when the researchers trapped him. But in March, he began a trek to the west along the southern lip of Boulder Canyon, swinging south of Nederland and north of Rollinsville.
M17 then made himself at home along the Continental Divide, cruising the section of mountains sandwiched between James Peak and Eldora.
Such long-distance romps may be rare for bobcats -- or at least these types of travels have not been well documented in the existing scientific literature.
So M17's trek will be one of the things that Jesse Lewis, a doctoral student at Colorado State University, looks into over the next two years as he works to sift through the data he's collected from 20 bobcats he's collared in the Boulder area and another 20 on the Western Slope.
In all, four adult male bobcats fitted with GPS collars in the Boulder area made long-distance trips. M17 actually returned to the Boulder area around Thanksgiving. Two other bobcats traveled south from Boulder and spent several months around Golden, and a final bobcat traveled to an area near Empire, and so far, hasn't left.
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