N.C. Zoo Goes to Ft. Bragg to Release Bobcat

Three months after it was found wandering and alone, a young male bobcat has reclaimed his place in the natural world.

When some concerned citizens found a two-month-old kitten wandering alone in June, they brought him to the N.C. Zoo’s Valerie H. Schindler Wildlife Rehabilitation Center to get the care he would need to survive.

After a careful examination by the Zoo veterinary staff, the kitten went into the care of the center’s volunteer rehabilitators. They put the youngster into a strict program to keep it healthy and to ensure that the “wild” stayed in the “wildcat” (another common name for bobcats).         

The program focused on maintaining the cat's healthy fear of humans and teaching it how to hunt. As a result, the cat remained isolated during his time at the center, and volunteers introduced natural prey into his habitat so he could practice stealth, ambush and capture.

Once the cat proved itself as a hunter (typically taking rabbits and mice), the Zoo's rehabilitators made plans to return him to the wild. To provide him with a buffer against humans and lots of space and prey, the cat was taken to an isolated area at Fort Bragg, an Army base near Fayetteville. The base maintains large forested areas that are rarely used by people, and where other bobcats are known to thrive.

If the Zoo's rehabilitators did their work well, and this bobcat is blessed with a bit of luck, he should establish a territory of his own at Ft. Bragg and, we hope, woo and win several mates and help create multiple litters of bobcats during his approximate 12-year life span.

The Valerie H. Schindler Wildlife Rehabilitation Center is funded by private donations through the N.C. Zoo Society and is staffed by volunteers with assistance from N.C. Zoo's veterinary hospital. The center provides free veterinary and rehabilitation services to more than 1,000 orphaned and injured native North Carolina animals every year. The center also takes educational programs across the state to teach school children, civic groups and other interested people how to live more compatibly with native wildlife. Last year, these programs touched more than 2,000 North Carolina school children.

For information about the Schindler Wildlife Rehab center, contact staff members at 336.879.7644 or e-mail zoorehab@nczoo.com. Their mailing address is: Valerie H. Schindler Wildlife Rehabilitation Center; 4403 Zoo Parkway; Asheboro, NC 27205.