New Hampshire Fish and Game has stated that its decision to reopen, by lottery, a hunting/trapping bobcat season, was based on the Cooperative Bobcat Research Project conducted by the University of New Hampshire’s Department of Natural Resources. I have reviewed this study.
The UNH study itself has concise documentation which ranges from Jan. 31, 2010, through Sept. 30, 2014, and breaks down into 14 reports.
Every report explains the science behind the evolving research as well as the methods of accumulating the data, which was then subsequently plugged into the science.
The data itself was gathered through a wide range of cross-referenced sources, too lengthy to list.
I discovered, and the study makes no efforts to hide this, that the data was subject, in spite of ingenious methods to avoid it, to what I believe to have been an unacceptable margin of error. The impressive science applied by UNH was only as good as the data applied to it.
I believe the data, then, subject to too many variables, fell short. What the study demonstrated to me was that the bobcat has in fact modestly thrived, by striking an equilibrium – a balance – naturally, because of the NHFG’s prior ban, and that the NHFG should allow that recovery to continue without interference.
I have incredible respect for the NHFG’s efforts at wildlife management. However, I believe at this time they are moving too fast in the wrong direction at the wrong time in regard to New Hampshire’s bobcat population.
AL BLAKE
Gilmanton