(photo from Indiana Forest Alliance)
Indiana’s Natural Resources Commission approved a bobcat trapping season in 40 southern Indiana counties Tuesday.
The season runs from November 8th to January 31st and allows licensed trappers to harvest one bobcat a year, to a statewide maximum of 250 bobcats.
Indiana State Tappers Association board member Nick Erny says the new rules were adopted as written even after the NRC received nearly 3000 public comments on the matter. “There’s a lot of us super excited about it. We’ve been having to release these animals for years,” he said.
State lawmakers mandated in 2024 that the Department of Natural Resources establish rules for a bobcat trapping season by this July.
Though the DNR said that the bobcat population is sufficient to prevent threats of extinction, critics like Samantha Chapman with Humane World for Animals argues there isn’t adequate population data. That, she said, contradicts science-based wildlife conservation.
Erny says that once the season starts, the true picture of how large the state’s bobcat population will come into focus“Whether it’s reproduction, food sources, you know, just actual counts where the population truly lies the heaviest, this is the simplest way to collect accurate data.”
Erny also believes that the population numbers are so high that in a couple years, the bag limit will be raised.