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Lynx rufus
Listed as Least Concern by the IUCN. Bobcats occur mostly in the United States, but also into southern Canada and northern Mexico. Historically, bobcats ranged throughout the contiguous US, but were extirpated from parts of the midwest and East coast (Nowell and Jackson 1996, Sunquist and Sunquist 2002), although they appear to be recolonizing or becoming more abundant (Govt of US 2007). Their range in Canada has been expanding northward with forest clearance (Nowell and Jackson 1996, Sunquist and Sunquist 2002). While generally favoring low and mid-elevations, in the western US they have been trapped at elevations up to 2,575 m (Nowell and Jackson 1996). In Mexico, radio-collared bobcats were located at 3,500 m on the Colima Volcano in western Mexico (Burton et al. 2003).
In the US, the bobcat ranges through a wide variety of habitats, including boreal coniferous and mixed forests in the north, bottomland hardwood forest and coastal swamp in the south-east, and desert and scrubland in the south-west. Only large, intensively cultivated areas appear to be unsuitable habitat. Areas with dense understory vegetation and high prey density are most intensively selected by bobcats (Nowell and Jackson 1996). The requisite features of bobcat habitat typically include areas with abundant rabbit and rodent populations, dense cover, and shelters that function as escape cover or den sites (Sunquist and Sunquist 2002). In Mexico, bobcats are found in dry scrub and grassland, as well as tropical dry forest including pine, oak and fir (Monroy-Vilchis and Velazquez 2003, Arzate et al. 2007, C. Lopez-Gonzalez pers. comm. 2007)
Taken at a small facility in Geyserville, CA.
We have them in Kentucky, but most people (even in the country) can go their whole life and never see one.