Where Do All the Bobcats Go?

Amid the buzz of afternoon traffic on Hollister Avenue, Serra Hoagland gingerly walks off the sidewalk and down the side of a jungled creek bank, carefully moving branches to avoid hitting hairy spiders or ripping their webs. After reaching a dry creek bed, the recently graduated UCSB master’s student steps toward a graffiti-covered bridge under Hollister, where she points out sandy ground pockmarked with animal prints and the wide, high passage through to the airport-surrounding wetlands beyond.

“This one is really good,” says Hoagland, who spent most of 2011 investigating wildlife corridors such as this throughout the Goleta Valley, a place where suburbia is surrounded by an impressive patchwork of open space. “This is awesome.”

The same can be said for Hoagland’s recently completed project, which rides a growing wave of wildlife movement studies being done across the globe, all spurred by the realization that broken-up habitats spell doom for certain species. From the Himalayas to the Netherlands to Central America, government agencies are protecting existing corridors and even establishing specially designed crossings over highways and other manmade impediments where needed. “There is an increasing emphasis worldwide in mapping out these linkages, communicating their importance to decision-makers, and planning around them,” said John Gallo, currently a senior landscape ecologist with The Wilderness Society, but formerly the director of the Conception Coast Project, which works to protect nature along the Gaviota Coast and elsewhere. “Serra’s work is a great example of blending theory and on-the-ground observation to tackle this challenge.”