The Bobcat Project

The Bobcat Project

Restoring wildlife habitat corridors for the NJ bobcat

Why It Matters

Top carnivores were mostly hunted out of the northeast over a century ago, as grey wolves and mountain lions were extirpated from New Jersey. In a landscape largely devoid of major predators, bobcats are a throwback to the wild animals that once ruled our forests. In many ways, they embody New Jersey’s spirit of the wilderness.

Yet the bobcat itself was nearly lost as well. Centuries of habitat clearing and unmanaged hunting had wiped out the bobcat population in the state, to the point that they were believed extirpated by the mid-1970s. A reintroduction campaign took place from 1978 to 1982, with bobcats from Maine released in the more remote areas of the northwestern part of the state.

From there, reintroduced bobcats combined with a small remnant population, as well as regular arrivals from New York or Pennsylvania, to create a slowly growing bobcat population, a genetically diverse “melting pot”.

However, habitat fragmentation in our densely populated state has made their recovery especially challenging. The bobcat was listed as a state endangered species in June 1991, and the recovery has been slow, if steady.

Conservation Efforts

CWF works with partners from the New Jersey Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP) as well as The Nature Conservancy – New Jersey chapter and Woodlands Wildlife Refuge to promote restoring wildlife habitat corridors to benefit bobcats and other terrestrial wildlife. This state priority, known as CHANJ – Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey – holds the potential to bring more vibrant and sustainable wildlife diversity in our densely populated state, while maximizing the ecological value of the many protected areas that we already have.