New Philadelphia High School team performs bobcat study
New Philadelphia ecology students pose with a deer carcass they placed in the woods to attract bobcats: Dylan McCahill, left, Jaime Velasquez Ortiz, Annie Bichsel and Hailey Kohler.
Students from Kip Brady’s ecology and the 21st century class recently completed an observation study of bobcats in Tuscarawas County. They wrapped up their work by presenting their findings at the Ohio Division of Natural Resources’ Student Wildlife Research Symposium on April 11.
This is the first year the course, which starts with conservation and biodiversity, has been offered to students. Brady said while the study was a small one, it generated some interesting findings.
“We weren’t even sure we would see bobcats around here,” said Brady, who is in his 25th year of teaching at New Philadelphia.
But after placing game cameras in the forest, it wasn’t long before the class saw a bobcat on camera.
The students also reached out to residents of Tuscarawas and surrounding counties asking for recent bobcat photos. They received 29 pictures from 22 people. “It was pretty cool to see, and it was a bit surprising to us,” Brady said.
One of the photos the class received was from Uhrichsville.
“It’s interesting how bobcats have gone from totally off the radar to people sending us pictures. One couple sent us a picture from the edge of Uhrichsville. In their yard they have bird feeders and stuff, and then there’s a bobcat rubbing against the tree.”
Student perspectives
Junior Zach Hurless said they learned bobcats were extirpated from Ohio in the mid-1850s. “Now they’re bouncing back, and it raises important questions for future research,” he said. “What has changed in the environment? Do they have a viable habitat now in this area?”
Hurless said he took the course to try to make a difference. “I think issues like ecology and biodiversity are becoming more prevalent each year. It’s important to understand that.”
Sophomore Ashlyn Bailey said a primary finding involved the relationship between bobcats and coyotes. “Bobcats like to stay in the forested habitats while the coyotes prefer to be more out in the open.”
Senior Vincent Henning outlined the findings on the presentation board the class used at the symposium. “You can see how the bobcats and coyotes were inversely related and kind of mirror each other in a way. We don’t know if it’s because coyotes are pushing the bobcats into the forested areas or vice versa, but there is some kind of relationship there.”
Brady said whenever a coyote did show up at a carcass, it was long after the bobcat was through with it.
Henning said they could always tell when a bobcat had been at the carcass. “They kind of dig and bury the carcass under leaves, but only the part where they were feeding.”
Something to chew on
Hurless pointed to another bobcat preference they discovered. “They tend to prefer deer carcasses over synthetic bait.”
But how do you obtain deer carcasses? Brady said a student told him there was a dead deer on the road near her house. “The next thing I know her dad had it loaded up in their four-wheeler and we were taking it back into the woods.”
Of course, the nine-month study would require more than one animal carcass. “There’s a joke that I’m always stopping on my runs if there’s like a dead animal on the road,” Brady said.
The students were a bit surprised by another finding. They expected to find more coyotes than bobcats, due to myriad reports of and concerns about coyotes throughout the county. Instead, the presence of bobcats was detected more often than coyotes.
What is not proven is if there are truly more bobcats in the county or if the explosion of trail cam usage is simply capturing them.
“There has been some research conducted on bobcats in Ohio since about 2018,” Brady said. “I think the increase in bobcats is real, and it’s been pretty rapid.”
With sightings of bobcats outnumbering coyotes, should the public be concerned?
“The only thing that’s scary about a bobcat is their screech,” Hurless said. “They’re pretty small, typically bigger than the average house cat but smaller than a mountain lion. Whereas coyotes tend to travel in large packs, posing dangers to farm animals, bobcats tend to stay to themselves.”
Out in the field
Brady said it was important to take the kids out of class and into the field for the study. “You’re only seeing a snippet of all the field stuff we do. But I think the best science education is doing science. These are experiences I can almost guarantee they won’t get otherwise.”
Henning agreed. “It was really cool to be able to learn in the classroom and then see it applied in a real-life situation. It’s unlike any other class.”
Brady said the experiences and lessons learned by the students will be valuable and useful regardless of their career paths.
“My goal is not to create any particular number of kids who become ecologists,” he said. “I want them all to be ecologically minded. I want them to view the world as an ecologist. The famous ecologist Aldo Leopold said, ‘To an ecologist, one lives in a world of wounds that’s quite invisible to everyone else.’ My goal in education is to fix that.”