NARRATOR: Julie Golla is a graduate student.
When she is home, she looks after a housecat.
(cat purring)
(phone alert)
NARRATOR: But when she leaves home, it is often because
another kind of cat is calling.
JULIE GOLLA: The allure of cats and their strength
and their stealth....
They're pretty fascinating.
(camera clicks)
NARRATOR: Julie is studying bobcats, and where she is
finding them might surprise you.
(car honks)
NARRATOR: With Texas Parks and Wildlife, Julie is researching
these wild cats in between urban Dallas and Fort Worth.
- We're hoping to answer some very basic questions
about urban bobcats- something that we know very little about.
We do know a decent amount about them in rural areas,
there have been a number of bobcat studies here in Texas,
but nothing urban.
We're genuinely looking at an area that is completely
encompassed by human development.
JULIE: We're looking at just how bobcats move in the city areas.
It started out with cameras.
Cameras have been very important, not only to see
the number of animals but to find those hotspots,
where we can catch them in a quick and efficient manner.
We've gotten quite a few bobcats on camera.
Let's see what we've got.
On cameras where we do get bobcat traffic,
that's where we'll put our traps.
Opossum, armadillo, mmm hmm, and then another bobcat walks by.
I thought we were going to have a hard time finding cats to
catch in these really urban spots, but there's no shortage
of bobcats, and so I think people will be surprised.
(golfer hits ball)
DEREK: When they're developing a golf course they don't realize
that the strip of trees between the fairways is serving as a
corridor for wildlife, but it works quite well for us.
(water flowing)
NARRATOR: In Euless, all around the Texas Star golf course,
wildlife corridors are identified.
Then the real intensive work begins.
- Between seven to ten traps are open at once.
With one person running a trap line, I can't do much more
than that, and we've been trapping for about 10 weeks.
That's good.
NARRATOR: Julie is no stranger to catching carnivores.
She has worked with mountain lions and wolves
in other states, but baiting for bobcats has its own challenges.
DEREK: The trouble is when you put a lot of scent down,
a lot of stinky, nasty stuff and then you're crawling
on your belly.
(laughs)
NARRATOR: Odors only go so far.
DEREK: Make it rain!
NARRATOR: Attracting bobcats requires some cat psychology.
- They're like housecats, they're curious,
they like smells, they like feathers, they like furry,
shiny stuff, and if they see something move,
it's going to catch their attention.
And fortunately I can use that to my advantage.
NARRATOR: Making cat lures isn't exactly glamorous....
DEREK: We're all about recycling.
JULIE: Fresh ones.
I don't do rotten road kill.
NARRATOR: But there is plenty of evidence that the
custom cat toys work.
- It's batting at it.
That's awesome.
(laughs)
You can tell this one's got it and it lets go
and it's probably flinging around.
NARRATOR: Of course, getting a cat's attention
and getting it to enter a trap are different things.
Bobcats are smart, wary, and rarely seen.
Just ask someone who works where a cat can be seen daily.
MELISSA SOOTER: Bobcats are about twice the size of your
typical housecat.
They are native, but people don't usually see them because
they're most active when a lot of people are either
just getting up or they're going to bed for the night.
But they are out there.
They're named the bobcat for their short little bobbed tail.
And uh, just so curious.
You can just tell that they're constantly thinking.
DEREK: Those are just a lot of nice, natural funnels.
NARRATOR: Derek and Julie must be constantly thinking as well:
monitoring cameras, moving traps, and freshening baits.
JULIE: I can put fresh raw meat- squirrel meat,
rabbit meat- in a trap and they still won't go in, just because
it's like, meh, I'm just going to go eat my own squirrel.
They're not food motivated typically, just because they're
so good at what they do.
So that's where it comes into like just keying in
on their curiosity.
NARRATOR: It may seem curious that a carnivore could even
make a living in this kind of landscape.
JULIE: Oh yeah, that's Euless Avenue so that's another
un-collared cat.
DEREK: Oh wow.
Eight o'clock at night, cars moving by it just doesn't
even care.
NARRATOR: The number of cats photographed suggests they
are finding enough to eat.
DEREK: The rats, the mice, the squirrels, the rabbits,
the really small, fuzzy critters that may be quick to us,
but not too quick for a bobcat.
NARRATOR: Between the roads and buildings, greenbelts
and watersheds connect hunting and hiding places, but exactly
how cats use these habitats is not fully understood.
And that is what the study is all about.
The study area stretches from the edge of
Fort Worth to Irving and Grand Prairie.
GPS collars will store data about daily movements
and ranges of individual cats for an entire year.
But first the cats must be captured.
(trap door closes)
Some traps can send an alert when tripped,
but Julie still checks every trap twice a day.
- Driving to check traps -- literally a wild bobcat chase.
Here we go.
NARRATOR: After ten weeks of trapping...
- This road is due for a bobcat.
NARRATOR: ...13 cats have been captured-
a few too small for collars.
Nine cats now wear the GPS loggers,
but one more is needed for a full range of data.
JULIE: She's thinking about it.
NARRATOR: The pressure is on.
Julie's friend Jim has come from Idaho to help trap for a week.
- I'm a wildlife biologist for the Nez Perce tribe.
Julie and I worked on a wolf project up there.
NARRATOR: But so far the trappers are plagued
by a different animal.
JULIE: Oh, little opossum.
Just kind of convince this guy to go on about his morning.
The bar is closed.
And there he goes.
When you're trying to catch certain types of animals,
you're always at the risk of catching by-catch species.
Bye bye, dude.
Don't come back.
I missed a cat last night because something fell on the
door and made it close, but she got on top of the trap
at one point, looking through the front of the trap.
Maybe she'll come back and check it out again,
if the weather holds up.
♪♪
(thunder)
Nothing.
(sigh)
♪♪
DEREK: Capturing the animals, meeting your quota is your
biggest fear at the beginning, because you don't know
what it's going to be like.
Unless someone's done it before, we have no idea
if it's possible or not.
JULIE: Alright, nothing here.
(sigh)
I no longer have my camera on my tree.
My trap has been messed with.
It really sucks.
♪♪
Nothing happening.
Everything's come to a grinding halt it seems.
We're going to get this bobcat.
We have to, or we're going to go crazy!
(laughs)
Opossum.
I'm somewhat frustrated with opossums at the moment.
Go on!
(opossum growling)
It's better than a stolen camera day.
He was a wonderful good squirrel.
JIM: A-1 in his prime.
JULIE: Now he looks terrible.
♪♪
Tracks?
Those are bobcat.
Well there was probably a opossum in the trap
so they couldn't go in.
I don't know how much more of this I can even take.
Always hope for tomorrow.
JIM: I was hopeful that we'd catch at least one bobcat.
Time's up for me, I have to leave this afternoon.
It's disappointing not to catch one,
but I fully understand that's how it goes.
DEREK: 4:52 PM, I was just about to head out the door
and I got a text, so I came to check the trap and sure enough,
there was a bobcat in the trap.
Right next to a very busy road, right at rush hour.
(bobcat growls)
NARRATOR: Derek is first on the scene.
(bobcat snarls)
DEREK: If I had to guess, I'd say it's a juvenile male.
Looks like he's a healthy animal.
NARRATOR: Julie is just dropping Jim at the airport....
- Bobcat!
NARRATOR: ...but still happy for the news.
(cheers on phone)
(laughs)
The crew is soon assembled.
- Yes!
- This would have been an excellent April Fool's Day joke.
JULIE: If this is a joke, I'm going to be very upset!
(laughs)
NARRATOR: But this time it's no opossum.
JULIE: Let's do 16 pounds for him.
NARRATOR: The crew readies a sedative cocktail to be
delivered with great care and an extra-long syringe.
JULIE: And Derek's going to act as my decoy to kind of
keep the cat facing him.
(growling)
Got him.
It takes about five minutes for the drug to take effect,
so we'll walk away and let him go down.
We'll wait until about 7:45.
(claps)
Good sleepy kitty.
We'll go to a much quieter location, not only for us,
but also for the bobcat.
Because even though they're down and immobilized,
they can still hear, they can still sense light
and fast movement that can kind of make their heart rate faster
so we want to keep things as calm and quiet as possible
throughout the capture.
Thank you kindly, sir.
He's not able to blink right now, so this is just
artificial tears.
NARRATOR: The cat is thoroughly looked after,
while being thoroughly weighed, measured and documented.
JULIE: Seven point five.
Some of these cats have a lot of spotting, almost leopard-like,
but yeah, these arm bars, that's how we identify them.
They're very easy to see in nighttime photos,
so that's what we get pictures of.
(shutter clicks)
DEREK: Okay.
JULIE: You want to get good solid information,
because this is a lot of work that goes into every
bobcat we catch.
DEREK: We're very excited and happy that we're adding
another member to our research group...
The fact is we still have a job to do
and we don't take it very lightly.
NARRATOR: As night falls, additional data is gathered,
but not only for their study.
JULIE: This is for parasitology, this is for disease,
this is for genetics, this is for rodenticide.
We're getting a lot of information from these bobcats.
NARRATOR: But for Julie and Derek's research...
JULIE: Okay, kitty.
NARRATOR: ...fitting the tracking collar is
the most important step.
DEREK: In a year, when we get that collar back,
it could potentially be giving us 3,500 locations.
JULIE: Perfect.
Alright he's kind of waking up.
(trap rattling)
♪♪
Just set it down.
It's always stressful doing this because you take the animal's
wellbeing in your hands when you work with them like this,
but we did everything right, and everything went really well.
He's doing great right now.
DEREK: It's relieving to see that the animal
is coming out in great shape.
JULIE: Just give him like 20 minutes.
- Last cat captured and collared- excellent day!
- Having good days like today makes me know we can
get the most out of this effort.
(bobcat snarls)
I didn't even do the thermometer, okay?
I think he's good.
♪♪
NARRATOR: Four and a half months after the release,
bobcat B14 and most of the study's cats can be
regularly located by the radio beacons on their collars.
But not all.
JULIE: We did have a cat, she lived off of a
six lane street and she ended up getting hit by a car.
We're sad to have lost a bobcat, but it's such valuable
information in our study, so we can learn about the challenges
that these cats overcome and sometimes don't overcome
when it comes to living in an urban landscape.
(radio chatter)
NARRATOR: But two more cats have also gone missing...
PILOT: Everybody ready?
NARRATOR: ...and taking to the sky holds the best hope
for finding them.
DEREK: Our main objective is to locate these missing animals,
but kind of a secondary goal is to find out where they are not.
Flying is a little bit more expensive than it is on the
ground, one flight can save you weeks of ground effort.
♪♪
NARRATOR: Within a half hour of takeoff, there is good news....
DEREK: Yeah, he's definitely in here.
He's even back there- I can hear nothing, nothing,
nothing, pulse.
NARRATOR: ...One of the two cats is found just beyond
his last known location.
JULIE: That's awesome.
We'll go check up on him later today and just see
what he's doing.
NARRATOR: Within the week the second missing cat is spotted on
a trail camera- the radio beacon has stopped working,
but the collar is still intact.
- When you strap electronic equipment to a wild animal,
you're never quite sure how that's going to hold up.
It's definitely that way.
I can't track him with my telemetry equipment anymore,
but I can still try and monitor his presence with these cameras
and we can hopefully try and recapture him
and remove the collar ourselves.
NARRATOR: It will be months before the remaining collars
drop off and reveal new secrets about the lives of
urban bobcats, but the study is already shedding new light
on how their habitats overlap with ours.
DEREK: He was spotted about here?
JULIE: Yeah.
- But he was also spotted about here?
JULIE: We've got cats sleeping under roadways,
they're hunting on golf courses.
We're finding that bobcats are in neighborhoods on a daily
basis and people rarely see them and rarely have problems.
If you see a bobcat, don't approach it or try to feed it.
As long as we respect them as wild animals,
we can continue to share this space with wildlife.
DEREK: They're here.
They're valuable.
They're excellent critters, and to strive in an
urban environment, that's incredible.
♪♪