Island Insights | Life on Kiawah Island

January 21st, 2010

Follow Kiawah’s Bobcats

Nature | Kiawah Conservancy



The Kiawah Conservancy has just launched a new bobcat tracking website featuring an interactive map that shows exactly where the bobcats travel. From the map, you can clearly see which part of the Island each bobcat prefers, and you can manipulate the settings to zoom in and out of different areas.

The data on the website was taken from a 2007 Kiawah Conservancy and Town of Kiawah Island study focusing on the Island’s bobcat population. The project employs GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking collars to examine fine-scale habitat use by bobcats on Kiawah.

Through the use of GPS technology, each collar has logged hundreds of locations.  During this pilot project, four bobcats were collared (3 males and 1 female). Two collars collected a location via GPS every ten minutes and the other two collected information every twenty minutes. Each collar collected data for about a month.

The Conservancy hopes to use this information to learn more about how bobcats move around the Island and perhaps the types of habitats they prefer. The ultimate goal of the project is to enhance land preservation planning on Kiawah Island. 

Visit http://maps.cofc.edu/WEBSITE/kiawah_again/viewer.htm to follow your Kiawah bobcats.

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  • Cathy posted at 11:07 pm on March 8th, 2010

    What a gift this is.  Please keep Kiawah as pristine as it is; this is a rare treasure.  Theodore Roosevelt would be proud.

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