control operators agreed to avoid SGARs on the island. Residents signed the pledge. Seabrook Island, whose bobcats frequently intermingle with Kiawah’ s, adopted its own version. Hilton Head soon followed.
The response worked. Exposure rates dropped, and no collared bobcats died from rodenticide poisoning in the years that followed.“ It was a really cool thing to experience,” Keating said.“ Not a lot of places are going to care this much about carnivores on the landscape.” Kiawah became a model— proof that coordinated community action could safeguard a vulnerable predator.
But conservation victories can be fragile. In mid-2024, Kiawah’ s wildlife team received new results from their routine testing of raccoons, opossums, and other mammals that interact frequently with rodent populations. The findings were unmistakable: exposure rates had once again surged. Raccoon exposure jumped from around thirty percent to nearly seventy percent. Similar increases appeared across every species tested.
Importantly, bobcats are not dying. Keating stresses this distinction.“ We haven’ t seen an increase in bobcat deaths,” she explained.“ But we’ ve never had a bobcat that didn’ t test positive for an anticoagulant. At what level does this become catastrophic again? We don’ t want to find out.”
Keating’ s research helps explain the trend. She collects bobcat scat across the island year-
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