Nine days to the U.S. national election. 18 days to save Indiana bobcats.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Indiana Department of Natural Resources proposes to reopen bobcat trapping, 70 years after shutting it down

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana––Indiana residents, preoccupied like the rest of the U.S. with the November 5, 2024 national election, have another date to circle on calendars:

November 14, 2024 is the deadline for submitting public comments on Department of Natural Resources scheme to reopen a bobcat trapping season, after a 70-year hiatus, during most of which bobcats were a state-recognized endangered species.

(California Dept. of Fish & Wildlife photo)

How to tell them “No!”

Comments may be submitted c/o https://www.in.gov/nrc/rules/rulemaking-docket/ or may be delivered in person at a public hearing scheduled for 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on the evening of November 14, 2024, at the Southeast – Purdue Agricultural Center, 4425 East 350 North, Butlerville, Indiana. 47223, from 5 to 7 p.m. Eastern Time on November 14.

The hearing is also to be livestreamed at the link above.

In addition, written comments may also be mailed to: Natural Resources Commission, Indiana Government Center North, 100 North Senate Avenue, Room N103, Indianapolis, IN 46204.

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources was mandated to re-establish a bobcat trapping season before July 2025 by the March 2024 passage of Indiana Senate Bill 241.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“The devil made them do it”

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources, already pushing for six years to re-start bobcat trapping, has responded by proposing a bobcat trapping season in 40 counties of southern Indiana, out of 92 Indiana counties total, with a bag limit of one bobcat per trapper and a season quota of 250 bobcats.

Additional rule changes to facilitate bobcat trapping include allowing legally trapped bobcats and their parts to be sold; allowing bobcats that are found dead to be kept by people with a trapping permit; and adding bobcats to the list of species for which a game breeder’s license is required, which would allow for keeping, killing, and pelting bobcats on fur farms, along the way collecting bobcat urine to be sold to trappers in setting up scent lures.

Scent lures are one of the most common methods of trapping bobcats. Another is baiting traps with live or dead bobcat prey species, including domestic cats and rabbits. Yet another is baiting traps with canned cat food, which tends to attract any domestic cats nearby, as well as bobcats.

Indiana state senator Scott Baldwin.
(Facebook photo)

Bill author Scott Baldwin is up for re-election

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources anticipates that about 2,000 licensed trappers––in other words, every active trapper in the 40-county southern part of the state, and about half of all the trappers in the state––will try to trap bobcats.

That translates into one trapper per 3,341 Indiana residents.

A bobcat pelt currently sells at auction for about $100, according to Trapping Today.

Indiana senate bill 241 was “authored by Indiana state senator Scott Baldwin, a Republican who represents Hamilton County,” reported Matt Christy for Fox 59 television news in Indianapolis.

Baldwin is up for re-election on November 5, 2024, opposed by Joel Levi, a Democrat whose platform, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, “includes “requiring background checks on private gun sales and supporting reproductive health care access. He also cites protecting the environment and addressing the lack of affordable housing as legislative priorities.”

Bobcat at Big Cat Rescue.
(Beth Clifton photo)

“Indiana’s only native wild cat”

“Bobcats are Indiana’s only native wild cat and are currently protected from being hunted or trapped,” Christy continued. “For more than 50 years bobcats were on the endangered species list in Indiana until being removed in 2005.”

Bobcat sightings “have increased in recent years, particularly in southern Indiana,” Christy said, “but some question if an 18-year span is enough time for a recovering population to go from being endangered to being culled.”

“Bobcats have only just begun to get a paw hold back into the Indiana ecosystem,” Shannon Anderson of Earth Charter Indiana told Christy.

(Washington Dept. of Fish & Wildlife photo)

“No estimates, studies, or educated guesses” about bobcat population

Indiana senate bill 241 author Scott Baldwin introduced the bill to reinstate bobcat trapping at a January 18, 2024 state senate Committee on Natural Resources hearing at which “no estimates, studies or educated guesses of the bobcat population in Indiana were brought forward,” Christy noted.

“When FOX59/CBS4 reached out to the Department of Natural Resources about any possible studies that may shed answers into the health of the bobcat population, the department only provided a study that polled hunters, trappers and outdoor enthusiasts about the possible implementation of a bobcat hunting season. Most ‘somewhat agreed’ with creating a season for hunting or trapping bobcats.

“There was no data mentioned in the study or information about the health of the bobcat population in Indiana,” Christy reiterated. “The Department of Natural Resources did not respond to further questions.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Scott Baldwin claims bobcats hunt turkeys

Scott Baldwin, however, claimed he had “noticed a decrease in rabbit sightings on his property since seeing bobcats roaming the grounds, and “cited attacks on turkeys by bobcats, even though the Department of Natural Resources website states that ‘research did not document wild turkey consumption by bobcats,” Christy continued.

No one doubts that a bobcat would eat a wild turkey if a bobcat could catch one, but turkeys are almost entirely diurnal, roosting at night out of reach of bobcats.

Bobcats, by contrast, are almost entirely nocturnal, seldom seen by daylight.

Coyote & bobcat. (Beth Clifton collage)

Indiana DNR got slapped down the last two times it tried to reopen bobcat hunting & trapping

“In 2018,” Christy recalled, “an attempt was made by the Department of Natural Resources to implement a hunting and trapping season for bobcats, but the department dropped the proposal after significant public backlash, including more than 1,300 people voicing opposition during public comment periods.

“In 2019,” Christy added, “the Department of Natural Resources even told the Indianapolis Star that it did not ‘have the scientific data to support a sustainable bobcat season.’ When the Indianapolis Star reached out to see if the data had changed in the five years since, the Department of Natural Resources did not respond.”

Bobcats. (Beth Clifton collage)

“Only starting to return to their native habitat”

“These small wildcats are only starting to return to their native habitats in Indiana’s woods,” blogged Humane Society of the United States president Kitty Block on September 26, 2024.

“But there is hope,” Block added. “Concerned residents of the state still have time to prevent even one bobcat from being killed,” since the Indiana Department of Natural Resources has the option of reducing the proposed bobcat trapping quota from 250 to zero.

As it stands, Block explained, “The proposal allows the use of cable neck snares, which are intended to strangle an animal to death by slowly cutting off the animal’s air supply, leading to hours or days of suffering. These snares can also catch animals by their torsos or feet, and the cable can become deeply embedded in their skin.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Snares catch dogs

“Snares hung on a bush or tree can be difficult for people out walking their dogs to spot,” Block continued. “And snares frequently catch nontarget wildlife such as eagles and deer fawns, as well,” all of which ANIMALS 24-7 can personally verify from a dozen years of removing illegally set traplines from posted land as volunteer assistant to a Quebec deputy game warden.

“The proposal would also allow the use of steel-jawed leghold traps, contraptions that trappers bury underground and that snap shut when an animal steps on them. Like snares,” Block explained, “leghold traps don’t discriminate, jeopardizing wild and domestic animals alike. They can cut through skin causing lacerations, and animals can damage their teeth and gums as they desperately try to free themselves.”

ANIMALS 24-7 can personally verify all of this too, except that many trappers do not bother to bury their leghold traps as Block described, especially in frozen ground. Snow is sufficient to hide and disguise a leghold trap hidden beneath a dead rabbit, road-killed animal, or pile of cat food.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Traps left unattended

“Trappers are permitted to leave traps unattended for hours,” Block added. “An animal caught in a leghold trap can be left to struggle for up to 24 hours, without access to water, shelter or food, until the trapper arrives to kill the animal by bludgeoning, strangling, suffocation, or shooting.”

The exact wording of the Indiana trap-checking regulation is that, “Traps must be checked and animals removed at least one time every 24 hours with the following exception: Traps that are designed to capture and kill the animal as a result of submerging the animal in water or crushing or asphyxiating the animal must be checked at least one time every 48 hours.”

A leghold trap or Conibear trap set at water’s edge for beaver, mink, muskrat, or river otter may also catch a bobcat, coyote, deer, or any other animal coming to drink, without the trapper knowing about it for 48 hours, if the trapper obeys the law.

ANIMALS 24-7 never found a trap that was legally placed, baited, and set. Not one. In 12 years of running daily nine to 25-mile foot patrols.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Bobcats on the ballot in Colorado

Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle, vigorously campaigning to pass Proposition 127, the Cats Aren’t Trophies ballot initiative in Colorado, has emphasized the cruelties associated with puma hunting, typically done with packs of dogs. But Proposition 127, if approved by Colorado voters on November 5, 2024, also would protect Colorado bobcats.

Almost twice as many bobcats as pumas are trapped and hunted per year in Colorado, 965 bobcats in 2023 compared with 502 pumas, Pacelle emailed to ANIMALS 24-7.

Bobcats, however, are “less a feature of the culture of Colorado’s fish and wildlife orbit,” Pacelle said.

Wayne Pacelle. (Facebook photo)

“It’s even worse for the bobcats”

Cruel as puma hunting with dogs is, Pacelle observed, “It’s even worse for the bobcats. These native cats, just a step up in size from a house cat, are also attacked by packs of dogs—and also killed in baited traps.

“Methods [of dispatching trapped bobcats] are inhumane and cruel,” Pacelle continued. “Some trappers say ‘shoot ‘em in the eye,’ but angled down into the throat to avoid blood splatter that ruins the market price for fur. Others say ‘hit her over the head.’ Copper pipe with a brass elbow is popular to crack a skull open.

“Drowning has been used in Colorado, despite American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines, because ‘a wet hide can make the fur slip.’ So has acetone, injected into the heart.