Next, I put the cage in position.  I want it sandwiched between vegetation with the door to the cage just about flush with the animal trail.  This way, any bobcat that walks along the trail won't miss the trap.  It can be quite difficult to get a wild cat to go in a cage trap, but a great first step is making sure that the trap is in a position along a trail that increases the odds a bobcat will actually see whatever lure is inside the trap. I always try to have my traps so that the door is not only flush with the animal trail, but that the trap itself is perpendicular to the trail so that no matter which direction a bobcat may be walking along the trail, it will have equal opportunity to see whatever lure is inside the trap.  In the photo below, I have set the trap in the position I want it.

In the pics below, there's a great view inside the trap.  Here we are looking into the cage trap when the door is set open.  In the photo on the left, notice that the bottom of the trap is a hard wire mesh. Because bobcats are ambush predators that like to sneek up on their prey, they can be sensitive and deliberate about where they put their feet.  They are very careful not to make too much noise when hunting since it might alert their prey. Often, the visual lures that are put inside a cage trap to entice a cat inside will resemble potential prey for the bobcat.  In the photo on the right, I've placed a decoy foam rabbit, with the nose of the rabbit facing the back of the cage.  From this view, we see the decoy from behind and it resembles the white tail of a rabbit.  If a bobcat is tricked by this decoy, it may try to stalk and then pounce on it, so I always try to disguise the bottom of the cage with dirt so the bobcat won't feel the hard wire mesh on the bottom.  Putting dirt in the bottom also lends the cage stability, which is another great way to try to eliminate as many "unnatural" things about the trap as possible.  These photos give a great view of the treadle, or the "plate," in the back of the trap where the animal needs to step to trigger the door to shut.  Its hard to see, but the treadle is linked with a chain that controls a bar that keeps the door open.  If the treadle is pressed, the chain pulls the bar, releasing and shutting the door.

Now that the cage is in place and there's dirt on the bottom of the cage, it is time to start disguising it!  That means gathering a lot of vegetation to put both inside and outside the trap.  On the inside, the treadle needs to be disguised.  On the outside, the trap itself needs disguising so that bobcats that see that trap from the outside don't get suspicous before they even get close enough to see what's inside.  In the photo on the left below, grass goes on the treadle underneath the foam rabbit.  On the right, I've started to put vegetation all around the trap to make it look more natural.

Next, I start putting the finishing touches on!  Vegetation is put on top of the door, and I make sure that all the vegetation on the outside looks natural and is relatively stable.  The vegetation should stay in place even if it gets a little windy at the trap site.  In the photo on the left (below), the red arrow is pointing to the front of the cage trap.  At this point, its hard to even see where the trap is, which is what I'm shooting for!  It looks natural on the landscape.  In the photo on the right, I've put some white feathers just inside the trap and on the trail.  These feathers will help grab the cat's attention when it walks by the trap, hopefully getting the cat to stop and take a look inside the trap and be enticed by the fake rabbit.  The feathers come from the feather pillow that I have prepared with my other cage setting supplies.

At this point, the trap setting is done!  Before I leave the trap, I test the treadle to make sure the trigger action of the trap is just the way I want it, and that if a cat enters the cage and steps on the treadle, the door will shut properly.  When its all done, I'm ready to head out to set another trap, check what traps were already set, or head home for the day.  Now, it can be hard to even see the trap, although the feathers are a dead giveaway!  

Heading out, I take one last look at the trapsite (photo below).  Now it really blends in to the landscape (red arrow pointing to trap below).  I'll be back early the next morning to see if I've caught anything.  In total, it usually takes about one hour just to set a trap. Despite the hard work, it's always fun to set a new trap because it really brings on a feeling of total optimisim that you may catch something very exciting in it!

During the next blog post, I'll cover what actually happens when I've caught a bobcat in a trap.  I'm heading out of town next week to visit another urban carnivore study area in South Africa, so it'll take me a few weeks to get the next post up.  Sorry for the delay, but maybe I'll also have a good story to tell from South Africa!  

In September, the UCLA lab I work in took a trip to Yellowstone National Park.  Our lab, the Robert Wayne lab, is a conservation genetics lab, specializing in dog and especially wolf genetics.  Most of the lab members study domestic dog or wild dog species, such as grey wolves and Channel Island foxes.  But just because people in our lab study these animals, it doesn't mean we are always around these animals!

So, in order to see some wolves in action, we decided to take a trip to Yellowstone.  Given the expense of flying to the Yellowstone area, many of us drove the long 17-19 hours to the park.  Once we got to Yellowstone, everyone in my car was excited to see some wildlife and take a nice long hike!

Watching wolves in Yellowstone mostly involves a lot of driving around.  In order to see them, you generally have to go to the open valley areas where, with binoculars or spotting scopes, you can observe them from a distance. To find them, you have to drive around to see if you can spot them- or spot the people that have already found them and are standing with binoculars and spotting scopes looking off in the distance.  In the open valley areas, you don't have vegetation blocking the view.  Wolves and other wild dogs are quite different than most wild cat species in that you can actually observe them!  With wild cats, because they are elusive and solitary, it makes it difficult to find them, let alone observe them for an extended period of time.

What's particularly amazing to me about the wolves in Yellowstone is that when they make a kill, it is sometimes possible to see them feeding on their kills.  And their kills also attract other scavenging animals like grizzly bears, coyotes, and ravens to name a few.  So if you are lucky to find a fresh kill close enough to the road, you may have the chance to see multiple species feeding and potentially interacting with each other.

Unfortunately for us, we didn't see bears feeding on any kills, but we did see wolves, including wolf pups, feeding on a fresh kill they made.  We also observed a coyote scavenging an older kill. The coyote we had the chance to see seemed almost nervous to scavenge the old wolf kill! Perhaps it was nervous to encounter any wolves potentially still on the kill.  

Beyond wolves and their kills, we did see other amazing things.  We observed a coyote hunting for what appeared to be gophers (see photos in slideshow below). One thing that's interesting about the Yellowstone coyotes is they look vastly different from coyotes in the Santa Monica mountains!  Their coats are a lighter grayish brown, rather than reddish brown. They are also larger and a little bulkier.  This isn't surprising given the colder climate the coyotes face in Yellowstone vs. in the Santa Monica Mountains. The bulkiness of Yellowstone coyotes helps them survive the winters, and their coat color helps them blend in better with the Yellowstone environment.  

We also saw bald eagles, golden eagles, a big grizzly, tons of elk, and pronghorn antelope. Pronghorn are really cool animals- they aren't true antelope, though the fill a similar ecological role as antelope in Africa. They are actually unique in that they are the only surviving members of the family (a type of classification for organisms) Antilocapridae.  One cool thing about them though is that they are the fastest land mammal in North America and can run up to 65 miles per hour.  They evolved their speed due to pressure from the now extinct North American cheetah that once roamed the plains of North America.  The cheetah went extinct thousands of years ago, but the pronghorn remains.  

One other cool thing we observed was that we heard elk bugling- something the males do to attract the females. Since it the elk were in rut (the mating season), there were large harems of female cow elk, with males watching over and claiming them as his own!

So, we headed out to the Santa Monicas where Johanna found the deer, and where Tanner also happened to also have wildlife cameras as part of his volunteer work with the National Park Service.  By time we got there, the deer's head was covered with maggots, and no bite wounds were visible either on the head or neck, so it remained unclear if a mountain lion was responsible for the death (although Johanna did get the pics below when she first discovered it, and no maggots were present).

 However, Tanner happened to have a remote camera within 10 feet of the dead deer, but where the deer died was just out of the visual field of the camera.  The camera still picked up some very interesting footage that provide some clues as to what may have happened.  In the video, we see two deer startled by something out of view of the camera.  The deer seem to be attempting to run from whatever startled them.  Then, out of view of the camera, we hear loud breathing and a few grunts, presumably by the deer, or perhaps whatever startled it.  The startled running combined with the sounds do lead me, at least, to believe that the deer was killed by a mountain lion.  There was a patch of missing fur that seemed perhaps licked off by whatever killed it just under the left elbow of the deer (see photo).  I did swab that region, so perhaps if the fur was licked off by a mountain lion, I will get DNA off the swab.  If no DNA is present, perhaps this will remain a mystery forever!  But check out the video footage and see what you think!     

*Please note: Tanner is a volunteer with the National Park Service, and so the work he does with cameras in State Parks within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area falls under research permits conducted by wildlife biologists with the National Park Service.  

Coyotes are often blamed for missing pets, and while this is sometimes the case, they may not always be the culprits.  The Cougar Network has put together a very nice guide which describes the differences between canine (either domestic dog or coyote) kills and wild cat (such as mountain lions or bobcats) kills.  Here you can learn about tell-tale signs of domestic dog or coyote kills in case you ever find an animal that has clearly been preyed upon and you want to try to figure out which predatory species is responsible (though mountain lions generally avoid urban areas so keep in mind that they are not likely responsible for missing pets).  If you live in an urban area or near a natural park and are worried about your pet's safety, the best thing to do is not let your pets outside unattended.  Outdoor cats will be at risk for being attacked by the natural predators that manage to survive in and near Los Angeles.  We cherish our pets and so we should also be aware of the risks the face outdoors.  However, it's quite amazing that predatory animals like coyotes, great horned owls, raccoons, and even bobcats manage to persist in and around a metropolis such as Los Angeles!  Thus, we should regard our amazing nature with respect, and protect our pets by keeping them indoors when possible.

Like B290, I hope to capture him, treat him for the mange, get samples, and if I'm lucky, put a radiocollar on him (assuming a collar happens to be available- they are expensive so I rely on collaborators to provide the collars).  I finally got everything together and on my way home from work at UCLA, was going to set a few traps on Tuesday.  However, Jeff Sikich called me to tell me that a trap was set for P19 and let me know he'd be waiting near the trap that evening to see if she decided to go into the cage trap.  So, instead of setting traps for bobcats, I decided to put it off for a day and go try to see a mountain lion! 

We waited for P19 until around 8pm, and although she was near the trap (we know because she had a GPS-enabled radiocollar and could determine her location using the radiocollar signal), we were skeptical she would go into the trap.  She'd already been cage-trapped two times, and some animals will eventually wise-up to the trapping methods we use to capture them.  So, we called it a night, though left tracking equipment with a project volunteer, Julie, that happens to live near the trapsite and could hear the trap signal from her house (we had a radio-transmitter on the trap that would emit a specific radio-signal if it was triggered)!  So, periodically through the night, Julie listened to the trap and at 1:30am, success!  The trap was triggered and P19 was in the trap vicinity!  We wouldn't know if P19 was actually in the trap until we physically checked the trap.  So, upon getting the call at 1:30am, we went to the trap site and in the dark, we hiked to the trap with all the capture gear in tow in case it was P19 in the trap.  And indeed, she had gone into the trap.  We drugged her in order to get samples and change her radiocollar.  The radiocollar she was already wearing was placed on her before she had her last big growth spurt, so it was time for her to get a larger collar.  To drug her, we blowdarted her through the cage, and since she was very mellow and calm in the cage, all went smoothly with the drugging.  Upon drugging her, we would have approximately 1 hour to get samples, assess her health, and change her collar.  All went well and after 1 hour, she was off, recovering from the drug and walking back into the mountains, her natural habitat.  We walked out of the trap site and were back at our cars at 4am.

With samples in tow, I now had to begin processing them.  At captures, because my overall 'bobcat disease susceptibility' project relies heavily on blood samples, I have taken on the responsibility to process all blood samples collected at captures that I am present for- mountain lion, bobcat, or fox.  Some blood samples we collect at our captures require that we centrifuge them for approximately 20 minutes ASAP and then flash freeze the samples in liquid nitrogen.  Usually we have a centrifuge that we carry with us in one of the National Park Service vehicles, but having been woken up in the middle of the night, we didn't have the right vehicle with us this time.  Luckily, we weren't too far from the NPS warehouse that also has a centrifuge.  I headed straight there to start tending the samples.  These samples that reqire the most immediate of care will give us information about the clotting time of the individuals from which we collect samples.  They are called PIVKA samples, which stands for 'proteins invoked in Vitamin K absence.'  Using these samles, we will assess whether animals exposed to anticoagulant rat poisons are experiencing the intended action of the poisons- to disrupt the Vitamin K cycle that is fundamental to the production of several critical clotting factors in the blood.  I was able to finish processing those samples by 6am and had a liquid nitrogen container in my car that I froze the processed samples in.

Once I'd finished that task, I was determined to get some traps set for the mangy bobcat in Topanga before heading to UCLA to finish processing the rest of P19's samples.  I headed straight to Topanga and had an idea of where I would put the traps.  Figuring out where to put traps can be the most time-consuming part of setting traps. 

I managed to set traps that morning, starting at 6am.  I went to the field, found two spots to get my first couple traps out in an area near where I'd gotten pictures of the mangy bobcat with a remote camera.  It takes about 1 hour to set each trap, so for a couple hours, I worked to get the first couple traps set.  For each bobcat I try to cat, I want several traps up to 1/2 mile apart from eachother- especially if I don't know the movement patterns of the individual I am targeting.  Since locally, bobcats have home ranges spanning about 1 square mile for females and about 2 square miles for males.  Therefore, having several traps spread out over about 1-2 square miles increases your odds of having your target bobcat walk by the trap. 

Knowing I had a lot of work do to at UCLA with the lion samples I'd collected, I could only get a couple traps out that morning.  At least I had something in place in case the bobcat walked by the area.  So, after setting traps, I was off to school!

I headed to campus where I "process" the blood samples I collect.  This involves making sure the samples are in proper longterm storage tubes.  To Be Continued...

Question 1 posed by writer:      I read your answers to the July Ojai article in the summer. Do you have any more updated info or can I take the stats from that?

Response: New data from my project suggests that 95% of bobcats are exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs) across our study area.  This includes data gathered from both urban areas and also from individuals in more "remote, pristine habitat" locations such as Point Mugu State Park.  Bobcats found to inhabit agricultural, urban, and even State Park lands are exposed to ARs.  This does NOT necessarily mean that bobcats in the parks are exposed to poisons placed on State Park land- merely that bobcat homeranges even for individuals that live in state park areas may abut urban or agricultural areas that the bobcats venture into.  A fetal bobcat in our area was revealed to be exposed already to ARs and so this is an issue beginning for bobcats during prenatal development and likely persisting for the duration of an individual's lifetime.

Question 2 posed by writer:      Is there any poison available in stores will not cause problems or will cause fewer?  We ended up using a neurotoxin poison from Lowes and Home Depot, hoping it was better - is there any research on those. We ended up using that for our issue but now I wonder why wouldn't there be a food chain rxn with those?

Response: The bottom line about poisons available on the market in the US is that each and every one has risks for wildlife associated with their use, either through primary or secondary poisoning.  Cholcalciforal, bromethelin, zinc phosphide, and strychnine pose both risks- primary and secondary poisoning.   Further, I'd like to add that because anticoagulant rodenticides are the most commonly used method for rodent control worldwide, more research effort has been put in their direction.  They are globally ubiquitous (perhaps with the exception of the UK, I feel like I read they are recently banned there).  If people switched to other poisons, we may become more aware of the hazards they pose.

It sounds to me like you aim to be environmentally conscientious.  In doing so, I encourage you to consider whether poisons are absolutely necessary.  Must we replace one poison with another?  This is the most frequent response of folks that I present my work to- if I can't use anticoagulants, then what poison shall I use?  If we truly care about wildlife, we should aim to mitigate our poison use entirely.  My stance is NOT that poisons, and even anticoagulants, are necessarily altogether banned.  My stance IS that any poisons should be absolute last alternative, used only when human health or structural integrity of buildings is threatened by uncontrollable rodent populations, and in the case of ARs, for use against invasive rodent populations affecting endangered native wildlife.  However, these are exceptional circumstances, and not the circumstances with which individual residents are typically faced.

I advocate the integrated pest management (IPM) approach, and according to San Francisco county guidelines for IPM - rarely, if ever, are residents truly faced with the need for poison use according to the "human health or structural integrity of buildings" concerns.  I encourage you to look in that direction, and in fact, Camilla Fox and others in Nor.Cal. have successfully pushed towards the banning of anticoagulants in Marin County, and the adoption of IPM instead.

Question 3 posed by writer:      What can the public do?  for ex, the largest pest control co here in our area assured us their anticoag was safe, even after I shared research articles with them. What should a person do to combat this misinformation? And are there some pest control company rat control practices that are better - if so what?

Response:  I encourage the public to be free-thinking educated consumers about the product they choose for pest control around their homes.  For this reason exactly I present the information on my website in its present format.  I understand what pest control companies tell people- I've heard it from folks who, like you, have presented them with information and they refuse to acknowledge the damage it does to native wildlife.  The bottom line about pest control companies is that:  1) they have a product to sell.  We must remember that they are a business and their products are poisons, 2) they are not scientists, chemists, biologists, wildlife naturalists out picking up the coyotes, owls, hawks, mountain lions etc. who have died of internal bleeding, or are chasing after the bobcats that die of notoedric mange.  Should we expect them to truly know the true extent of the damage those products do to wildlife?  I personally don't imagine them keeping up on the latest scientific research articles on the subject...particularly if it prevents them from effectively selling their product.

There are pest control agencies that practice IPM, and I encourage you to seek those out.  Again, I'm not a pest control expert- I'm a grad student at UCLA trying to get my PhD, so this leaves me little time to explore alternatives and come up with great suggestions for people across CA.  As a scientist, my first passion is research and wildlife...I hope that folks like you with an interest in trying to do well, will pick up where the research people like me do, and help find local "sustainable" pest control companies and spread the word. I personally lived for 3 years right next to Topanga State Park (ie., it was my backyard).  I had various native rodents coming into my house when I first moved there, and I was able to successfully find the holes in the house where they entered each night and plug up the holes.  It took all of half a day to remedy, and for three years, I never had another rodent enter my home.  Poisons were not necessary.  Another step I took was to NOT feed birds.  I did when I first moved there, but then I quickly saw the ground squirrel flourish, and start chewing on the house and things outside when the food ran out.  These are steps we should all take if we have rodent problems before we break out the poisons.  And people may be surprised at how effective a strategy it is!