# Bobcats select young forests and avoid clear-cut and mature forests in a timber-logged landscape

> Do bobcats like logged forests? GPS-collared bobcats on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula avoided fresh clear-cuts and older forest, but favoured young regenerating stands 6 to 15 years old, where prey are likely plentiful. Their choice of cover peaked at about two-thirds canopy cover.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 7 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2025-serieys-hickling-bobcats-logged-forests/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** Laurel E. K. Serieys, Christopher J. Hickling, Daniel Fortin, Matthew S. Rogan, Shannon Kachel, L. Mark Elbroch, Kimberly Sager-Fradkin, Andrew Stratton, Caitlin Kupar, Axel Moehrenschlager, Wai-Ming Wong, Kathleen Carroll
- **Year published:** 2025
- **Journal or source:** Forest Ecology and Management 588: 122764
- **Full citation:** Serieys, L.E.K., Hickling, C.J., Fortin, D., Rogan, M.S., Kachel, S., Elbroch, L.M., Sager-Fradkin, K., Stratton, A., Kupar, C., Moehrenschlager, A., Wong, W.-M., and Carroll, K. 2025. Bobcats select young forests and avoid clear-cut and mature forests in a timber-logged landscape. Forest Ecology and Management 588: 122764.
- **DOI:** 10.1016/j.foreco.2025.122764
- **Access status:** Publisher link only
- **Where to find it:** https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2025.122764

## Tags

- **Species:** Mammals > Bobcat
- **Region:** North America > United States
- **Tracking:** Tracking; Tracks and signs identification
- **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour; Habitat selection; Home range; Human disturbance; Movement
- **Methods and technology:** Camera traps; Geographic Information System (GIS); Global Positioning System (GPS) collars; Step selection function
- **Data type:** New field data
- **Observer qualification:** Not reported
- **Discipline:** Behaviour and ecology; Wildlife tracking
- **Year published:** 2025

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied: bobcat (Lynx rufus), nine GPS-collared individuals (three adult females, six males including one subadult). One male (B01M) was killed by a coyote about a month after collaring. Likely prey discussed: mountain beaver (Aplodontia rufa) and snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus). Trees: Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) and western red cedar (Thuja plicata).
- **Location and habitat:** Coastal temperate rainforest on traditional lands of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, Olympic Peninsula, Clallam County, western Washington, United States (about 48.11°N, 123.82°W), a study area of about 150 km² of state and private logging land, sparse low-density housing and Olympic National Park; forest ages from 0 to over 700 years.
- **Topics:** effects of clear-cut timber logging on carnivore movement and habitat selection; forest age classes after clear-cutting; canopy cover; slope; distance to streams, paved roads and logging roads; home range size; transient behaviour; forest management for wildlife; anticoagulant rodenticide risk
- **Statistics or models:** Step selection functions with a 1:20 matched case-control design (random steps from gamma step-length and von Mises turn-angle distributions), conditional logistic regression with generalized estimating equations and robust standard errors; quasi-likelihood information criterion (QIC) and 5-fold cross-validation with Spearman rank correlations; piecewise linear spline for canopy cover; 95% autocorrelated kernel density estimate (aKDE) home ranges; Pearson correlations and variance inflation factors.
- **Data type:** New field data: bobcats captured March 2021 to April 2024 (cage traps placed where bobcat signs had been seen, or with hounds); GPS locations every hour (median 127 days per collar; 2,302 steps). Landscape data from Washington State Department of Natural Resources forest age layers, NASA elevation and vegetation index data, road and stream layers and TerrAdapt canopy cover. Inconsistencies in the paper: (1) the results and Figure 3 give the canopy cover peak as 66%, but the discussion says bobcats avoided dense canopies “above 70% cover”; (2) the results give the k-fold score as 0.68 ± 0.07, while Table 2 gives standard deviations of 0.09 and 0.11 for the two best models.

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

Clear-cut logging changes forests for decades, helping some wildlife and harming others. The authors tested how logging on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula affects where bobcats move. They caught nine bobcats in cage traps or with hounds between 2021 and 2024 and fitted GPS collars that recorded a location every hour.

Using step selection functions, they compared each bobcat step with 20 possible steps it could have taken, testing forest age since clear-cutting, canopy cover, slope, vegetation greenness and distances to streams, paved roads and logging roads. They also estimated home ranges.

### 2. What they found

- Bobcats avoided the newest clear-cuts (0 to 5 years old) and older forests (41 to over 150 years), and selected young regenerating forest 6 to 15 years old.
- They preferred gentler slopes, and did not show selection for logging roads.
- Selection for canopy cover rose steadily up to 66% cover and then declined.
- Female home ranges averaged 7.6 km² and male ranges 16.0 km² (excluding one transient male whose range was 738 km²).
- Results were the same with or without the transient male, except that slope dropped out of the best model.

### 3. What they concluded

- Clear-cut logging appears to benefit bobcats on the Olympic Peninsula by creating young forest with dense understorey, which likely holds more prey such as mountain beavers and snowshoe hares.
- Bobcats seem to prefer intermediate cover, a trade-off between concealment for hunting and other factors.
- Managing logged forests for a mix of stand ages, leaving some undisturbed patches and debris, keeping patches connected and limiting use of the rodenticide chlorophacinone against mountain beavers would likely benefit bobcats and other wildlife.

### 4. How tracking was or was not used

Tracking was used only to catch the bobcats: cage traps were set where bobcat signs had been seen and where camera traps routinely detected bobcats, and six of the nine bobcats were caught by pursuing them with hounds. Habitat selection itself came from GPS data.

### 5. Tracker or observer certification

Not reported. The paper does not say who identified bobcat signs or how their skill was assessed.

### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

- GPS collars with drop-off units and rot-off cotton spacers as a backup.
- Cross-validation used as the main test of model performance, because models chosen by information criteria were overfitting.
- Movement data are publicly available on the Movebank Data Repository.

### 7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

- Maintaining stands 6 to 15 years old within a mosaic of forest ages, with undisturbed patches and connectivity, would likely benefit bobcats.
- Limiting anticoagulant rodenticide use in timber forests would reduce poisoning risk to bobcats that eat mountain beavers.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: Bobcats select young forests and avoid clear-cut and mature forests in a timber-logged landscape (Serieys and Hickling et al., 2025). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2025-serieys-hickling-bobcats-logged-forests/