From Caracals to Bobcats: A Passion for Small Cats

As the new Project Coordinator for Panthera’s Small Cats Program, I am excited to work in upstate New York on bobcats — the species I wrote my PhD dissertation on. However, between my graduation from UCLA in 2014 and now, I also focused on another small cat species. I developed the Urban Caracal Project to examine the effects of urbanization on the behavior and genetics of caracals living within the city of Cape Town, South Africa. 

I was fascinated by questions of how urbanization impacted the behavior — both movement and foraging — of caracals in a system heavily fragmented by the city of Cape Town. Here, caracals can be found within Table Mountain National Park, located in a peninsula isolated by Cape Town. The caracals mostly stay within the boundaries of the national park, but sometimes venture into the city, especially the younger males.  

There are few studies that investigate the impacts of urbanization on wild felids, although urbanization is a rapidly expanding force globally, and more than 50 percent of humans now live in cities. As the world urbanizes and becomes increasingly fragmented, it is becoming more important to consider urban landscapes as places to protect biodiversity. Cape Town itself was recently designated as the city with the most biodiversity globally, so, understanding how urbanization is impacting the wildlife in the city is important to help it reach its biodiversity conservation benchmarks. 

However, there were a number of challenges when I began my work! First, I am an American, and was learning to navigate a country completely foreign to me. Before I arrived in South Africa, I'd only spent one day in Cape Town, so I had a LOT to learn about this new place. Even just learning to drive on the opposite side of the road proved tricky! But generally, it also was difficult to figure out how to get help on the project, and eventually I learned I had to recruit international volunteers to provide much-needed assistance. 

The work was difficult and sometimes discouraging; there was even a period of more than four months during which I didn't capture any caracals at all because I was still learning about their behavior and how they used the landscape. I was checking traps twice a day, every day of the week for four months. It was really exhausting (emotionally and physically) to do this just to find nothing but mongooses and genets in my traps.  

Despite these challenges, we eventually successfully captured 29 caracals and GPS-collared 26 of them. We monitored their movements for approximately six months (that's how long the collar batteries lasted). If they stopped on the landscape to feed or rest, we investigated those locations (there were more than 700 total GPS clusters investigated). Panthera got involved later in the project in 2019, when the Small Cats Program gave us funding for some of our genomics work to determine whether isolation of the population by the dense urban Cape Town matrix is having genetic consequences, such as reduced gene flow or inbreeding. 

Some of my most remarkable experiences came from being on the ground tracking the cats directly. There had previously been a massive fire that impacted the park, and our only collared caracal at the time had localized his movements in one very specific part of the park that had just burned. We were worried that he'd gotten injured in the fire, so we went to investigate. It turned out that he was out there hunting small antelope that were hiding amongst what vegetation hadn't been burned. 

In another instance, we were very lucky to discover the den of a female that had given birth to two kittens. It took three days of hard work to find the den, but when we did, we were over the moon, and the kittens were unbelievably cute and weighed only around 500 grams! 

Some of the principal research objectives for South African National Parks before our study started were to determine whether there was a population of caracals in the national park, and if so, where on the landscape they could be found. They also felt it was essential to know what their movements were like and how they responded to fire (it is a fire-driven ecosystem). Our research helped address the research gaps that SANParks laid out, as well as providing a wealth more information. 

For these incredible caracals, I continue to work on publications and data analysis when I'm not in the field. We have a habitat selection paper that is very close to publication, but I'm also working on a paper about threats to the survival of Cape Town's caracals, as well as the genetics of the isolated population. Understanding how these animals move — and what landscape features are important when they decide where to move on the landscape — will help the city acquire new land parcels to create stepping stones for habitat connectivity across the city.   

In my new position, I am helping the Small Cats Program start bobcat research, primarily in New York State, where we are initiating a long-term bobcat study. I'm headed out in the fall to start trapping in rural southeastern New York. We hope to capture and collar six bobcats. Early next year, it looks like I'll be going to Thailand to work on a fishing cat project there, and I am also providing some support for an oncilla project in Costa Rica. It can definitely be said that I have big plans for small cats! 

Learn more about Panthera's Small Cats Program.