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Trapping/hunting regulations across states and provinces; bobcat range in inset. The color scheme is cumulative: green is full protection; yellow is legal hunting/trapping but with mandatory checks and bag limits; orange removes bag limits; red removes bag limits and mandatory checks; black is no monitoring or protection at all
Source publication
Ecotourism enhances conservation management, promotes non-consumptive use of wildlife, and increases local community resources over that of select individuals when compared with consumptive uses such as hunting or trapping. The bobcat is a cryptic mesocarnivore widely exploited for pelts across North America, and a species increasingly contributing...
Citations
... Champ 2009). This revenue figure underscores the potential aesthetic value of elk and compares favorably to the non-consumptive economic value of another charismatic species, the bobcat (Lynx rufus), where wildlife viewing generated $305,000 to see a single bobcat in one winter season at Yellowstone National Park (Elbroch et al. 2017). Elk also provide a plenitude of ecological benefits. ...
Successful translocations of tule elk (Cervus canadensis nannodes) have been conducted since the early 1900s, with their state population rising from a nadir of as few as three surviving individuals to about 500 when reintroductions began, and to over 5,700 by 2017. However, natural range expansion of extant populations is currently limited by heavily trafficked major highways and urban areas with dense human populations. We determined that the San Francisco Peninsula and northern Monterey Bay counties (the study area) offer 193,973 ha (479,308 acres) of protected open space, several orders of magnitude greater than coastal tule elk home range size. Habitat suitability is supported by abundant historical observer, museum, and archeological records of elk located in this region. The nearest elk population to the study area is in eastern Santa Clara County and has grown from 65 animals that were translocated to Mt. Hamilton in the Diablo Range from 1978-1981 to at least 90 in five-six separate herds counted by aerial and photographic surveys in 2019. United States (U.S.) Highway 101 and metropolitan San Jose remain barriers to western range extension. Translocation and/or construction of freeway over-and under-crossings may enable westward range expansion to a less arid region, contributing to 63 increased resilience of tule elk to climate change, and bringing aesthetic, financial, and ecological benefits of this once native ungulate grazer to the area.
... Activity level (act) is an ecological metric that refers to the proportion of time an animal spends active, providing an index for energy expended, foraging effort, and even vulnerability to risk (Rowcliffe et al. 2014). Finally, we repeated this process using only bobcat detections to determine whether bobcat activity patterns showed significant differences across ecoregions, areas of various harvest management (Elbroch 2017) or population status (e.g., furbearer, threatened) (Roberts and Crimmins 2010). ...
Mammalian carnivores are elusive and enigmatic species that often play keystone roles in ecosystems through direct and indirect effects. Growing evidence shows that human activity can impact carnivore behavior and community structure by altering predator-prey interactions, shifting diel activity patterns, and altering wildlife movement. Our goal was to investigate the ecological role of bobcats (Lynx rufus) across carnivore communities in the continental USA by quantifying variation in spatiotemporal patterns and determining what environmental and human factors influenced carnivore community interactions. Using camera trap data from the inaugural nationwide Snapshot USA project dataset collected from September-October 2019, we constructed diel activity density curves, applied multispecies occupancy models, and calculated attraction-avoidance ratios. Our results suggest that bobcats display the greatest flexibility in their diel activity among the suite of carnivores sampled. Further, bobcats respond differentially at large spatial scales relative to the presence of dominant or subordinate carnivores, with fluctuating impacts mediated by human and environmental factors. Bobcats' co-occurrence with dominant carnivores (i.e., wolves Canis sp., pumas Puma concolor) was influenced primarily by human-related factors, whereas co-occurrence with subordinate carnivores (i.e., foxes) was more influenced by environmental factors (i.e., precipitation, gross primary production [GPP]). Bobcats appear to interpret humans as the apex predator on the landscape regardless of the presence of dominant or subordinate species. Understanding the influence of humans as "super predators'', as well as the importance of environmental factors that impact intraguild carnivore interactions across the USA is critical for establishing successful management practices to promote functioning communities.
... Most state and provincial authorities require mandatory reporting of trapped or hunted bobcats, but others rely on CITES tags, which are required for exporting bobcat pelts, for harvest monitoring. Bobcat viewing is also an expanding component in ecotourism for the nonconsumptive public (Elbroch et al., 2017). ...
1. Wildlife managers require defensible and transparent population estimates to justify species management. 2. Statistical population reconstruction (SPR) is being widely adopted to estimate wildlife population sizes from hunter harvest data. 3. We assessed factors influencing variation in SPR population estimates produced for bobcats in Wyoming, USA. Specifically, we tested whether prey availability, hunter/trapper effort, the number of bobcats killed or the methods used to classify the age and sex of bobcats ('classification protocol') best explained changing SPR abundance estimates. We then quantified the relative magnitude of these effects on SPR model outputs. 4. Classification protocol had the strongest impact on SPR abundance estimates, such that a shift to visual age and sex classifications by trappers/hunters resulted in overestimates of bobcat abundance. 5. The Wyoming bobcat SPR population estimates were likely unreliable and we suggest that spatially explicit integrated population models may be a better approach to obtaining defensible estimates upon which to establish scientific management of this charismatic carnivore.
... Shark tourism and whale watching tourism globally are estimated to generate $314 million USD (Cisneros-Montemayor et al. 2013) and $2.1 billion USD (O'Connor et al. 2009), respectively. Some studies have even attempted to assign values at the individual level: the average reef shark in Palau has an estimated value of $179,000 USD/yr (Vianna et al. 2010) while one Bobcat (Lynx rufus) in Yellowstone National Park has an estimated value of $308,105 USD/yr (Elbroch et al. 2017). Each of these nonconsumptive valuations are reported to be orders of magnitude higher than the consumptive valuations for these individuals. ...
Wildlife tourism, including tourism involving large predators, is a rapidly growing industry that can generate many conservation and economic benefits. Monetary values can be derived for populations of large predators, and even individuals, on the basis of how much money tourists spend to see and interact with these awe-inspiring animals, but valuation studies only exist for a few groups of species. To help fill this gap we quantified the monetary value of crocodilians that are the focus of a wildlife tourism business in South America, the first time such a value has been calculated for crocodilians. We also compared the monetary values we derived with the monetary values of other crocodilians harvested in the hunting and farming industries during the same time period (20092014). We found mean minimum and maximum gross values of individual crocodilians per year as part of wildlife tourism were $422.00 USD and $566.67 USD, respectively, both higher than the mean gross value of individual crocodilians per year across hunting and farming industries ($300.29 USD). Individual crocodilians that were recaptured multiple times as part of wildlife tourism activities reached a peak value of $2700.00 USD. Thus, our study demonstrates that wildlife tourism can create substantial monetary incentives for local communities that coexist with crocodilians to work toward conservation goals. We conclude that wildlife tourism focused on crocodilians should be viewed as part of a larger strategy for conserving threatened populations, one that may include partners in the farming and hunting industries as well.
... In Africa and India, for example, open habitats have supported big cat tourism for decades. If well-managed, predator tourism supports big cat conservation and the conservation of their habitats (Hemson, Maclennan, Mills, Johnson, & Macdonald, 2009;Karanth, DeFries, Srivathsa, & Sankaraman, 2012;Mossaz, Buckley, & Castley, 2015), and thus conservation practitioners have explored its growth in other regions of the world (e.g., bobcats, Lynx rufus; Elbroch, Robertson, Combs, & Fitzgerald, 2017). Torres del Paine National Park (Barrera, Soto, Cabello, & Antúnez, 2010;Sarno, Hoogesteijn, Tortato, Quigley, & Elbroch, 2019). ...
en Livestock is the predominant biomass in terrestrial systems around the world, and conflict with livestock inventories continues to threaten large carnivore persistence in increasingly fragmented habitats. Nevertheless, social tolerance for large carnivores is increasing, as is interest in predator tourism, which can facilitate wildlife–livestock coexistence strategies. We report two case studies in which natural disasters led to a reduction in local livestock inventories, and subsequent economic hardships that in turn created opportunities for initiating predator tourism: jaguar tourism in the Pantanal of Brazil and puma tourism in the Patagonia steppe grasslands of southern Chile. Any time livestock numbers are reduced, whether through management decisions or natural disasters, may be considered opportunities to reduce dependency upon livestock and to weigh diversifying revenue streams via alternative activities, such as tourism. Livestock reductions in combination with a surge in the global demand for wildlife tourism have made jaguar and puma tourism an increasingly important economic activity for both regions. Well‐managed predator tourism can be effective carnivore conservation, and if integrated among other strategies, can augment conservation agendas.
Abstract in Spanish is available with online material.
Resumen
es Las diversas especies de ganado doméstico, constituyen la biomasa predominante en los sistemas terrestres de todo el mundo, y el creciente conflicto con los rebaños de ganado sigue amenazando la persistencia de grandes carnívoros en hábitats cada vez más fragmentados. Sin embargo, la tolerancia social hacia los grandes carnívoros está aumentando, al igual que el interés por el turismo de predadores. Aquí presentamos dos estudios de caso en los que los desastres naturales condujeron a una reducción de los rebaños ganaderos locales y a dificultades económicas que, a su vez, crearon oportunidades para iniciar el turismo de jaguares en el Pantanal de Brasil y el turismo de pumas en las estepas de la Patagonia del sur de Chile. Cada vez más, los profesionales de la conservación exigen estrategias de coexistencia entre la vida silvestre y el ganado, y cualquier momento en el que se reduzca el número de cabezas de ganado, ya sea a través de decisiones de gestión o de desastres naturales, ello debe considerarse como una oportunidad para sopesar la diversificación de las fuentes de ingresos y las actividades alternativas, incluido el turismo. La reducción de la ganadería en combinación con el aumento de la demanda mundial de turismo de vida silvestre han hecho del turismo de jaguares y pumas una actividad económica cada vez más importante para ambas regiones. El turismo de predadores puede ser una solución positiva para apoyar la conservación de carnívoros, si además se integra con otras estrategias, puede apoyar las agendas de conservación.
... Others have since made the case that NAM's focus on hunting and hunters' interests have further marginalized the interests and opinions of nonhunting wildlife enthusiasts (Feldpausch-Parker et al. 2017;Peterson and Nelson 2017), thus serving as a polarizing force within the wildlife conservation community by championing a wildlife-conservation system that values the interests of hunters over those of non-hunting wildlife enthusiasts. Further, Clark and Milloy (2014), Vucetich et al. (2017), Elbroch et al. (2017), and Serfass et al. (2017), respectively, voiced concerns pertaining to the legitimacy of rationale used by the wildlife conservation system associated with NAM to justify consumptive-use as part of conservation strategies for carnivores, in general, with the gray wolf (Canis lupus), bobcat (Lynx rufus), and river otter (Lontra canadensis) as specific examples. ...
We argue that the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation (NAM) as currently promoted is an overly narrow construct, used both to explain how North American wildlife conservation developed historically, and as a prescriptive framework for applying a hunting-focused form of wildlife conservation. We argue both constructs are problematic in that the complexities of traditional and historical roots of wildlife conservation in North America are portrayed inadequately and selectively to overemphasize hunters' contributions. We raise issues and concerns about the rhetoric used to promote NAM and its associated form of wildlife conservation both within the wildlife profession and to the public. Portrayals of NAM have repeatedly emphasized the important role of hunters and hunting, largely failing to provide attribution for contributions made by other stakeholders or through other forms of interest in wildlife. The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation does capture some of the traditional policies and practices within wildlife management in the United States of America (USA), and to some extent Canada, but in our opinion, it has not evolved to fully represent wildlife conservation efforts of the past, nor point the way toward broader, more inclusive approaches to conserve species, communities, and ecosystems into the future. We offer 5 premises with evidence to support our assertions and probing questions as a basis for initiating a call to critically analyze NAM's Correspondence: Thomas SERFASS et al. 102 structures, functions, and purposes. Briefly, the premises focus on NAM as a hunter/hunting-focused form of wildlife conservation that serves to empower hunters and marginalize non-hunting wildlife conservationists in decision making pertaining to wildlife policy, ultimately hindering development of a more holistic, progressive form of wildlife conservation.
