Bobcats are back in North America, and they’re helping protect people from zoonotic disease

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• In the last 125 years, bobcats have recovered significantly from extremely low numbers, with several million individuals found throughout North America today.
• Living at the interface of urban and rural environments, bobcats face many human-caused dangers, including loss of habitat to roam, automobiles, and rodent poisons.
• Bobcats help reduce the spread of diseases from animals to humans partly because they and other large mammals are poor disease vectors. Bobcats also prey on the small rodents that easily transmit pathogens.
• It’s legal to hunt bobcats in most of the United States. California, which has for five years closed the bobcat season, may reinstate hunting in 2025. Some researchers suggest that regulators should more carefully consider the role thriving wildcat populations play in protecting human communities from zoonotic diseases before expanding hunting.

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