LOCAL ANIMAL - BOBCAT

Like all felines, bobcats are stealthy animals who tend to shy away from humans while quietly stalking their prey; but they take up a lot of screen time on Michael Allen’s remote wildlife tracking camera footage. Allen, who has been involved in wildlife (especially bear) research in the Sea to Sky Corridor for more than two decades, says bobcats seem to be attracted to the same areas as black and grizzly bears, and they’re not at all camera-shy. “Being a cat, they’re pretty secretive, but when I started using remote cameras to get footage of bears, I started to see bobcat after bobcat,” says Allen. About 2 ½ times the size of a house cat, bobcats are often mistaken for lynx. In fact, the two are in the same family — the bobcat is one of the world’s four major species of lynx. But the Canadian lynx has broader feet and longer legs than the bobcat, allowing lynx to stalk their prey (mostly snowshoe hares) in deep snow. Lynx also have long (up to two inches) black tufts at the ends of their ears, while bobcats either have short ear tufts or none and a short or “bobbed” tail. Bobcats are more adaptable, thriving in lower-elevation forests, and are therefore more plentiful (and more often seen by humans) than lynx in the region, Allen says. Their diets are much more diverse: Allen calls the bobcat a “No. 1 scavenger” that often comes along once large carnivores such as bears, wolves and cougars have eaten most of a kill. “The bobcat has a really small stomach. They don’t have to eat a lot at once, so they eat a lot of small rodents; and they’re not large enough to take down anything bigger,” he says. Some of Allen’s footage shows bobcats diving into streams to fish for salmon. “They’ll perch on a log and just pounce on an 80-centimetre salmon, and then they’ll drag it away somewhere, eat some and bury the rest in the snow,” Allen says. Bobcat attacks on humans are rare. If you see one, the Resort Municipality of Whistler advises people not to approach, keep pets on a leash and small children at a safe distance, keep your group together and back away slowly. Report sightings to the B.C. Conservation Officer Service at 1-877-952-7277 or 604-905-BEAR.