Anticoagulant rodenticides in urban bobcats: a sixteen-year exposure study

This long-term study screened bobcats across the urbanizing landscape of southern California and found pervasive exposure to second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, with the great majority of tested animals carrying residues of one or more compounds. The authors identified urban-associated risk factors and linked exposure to notoedric mange outbreaks and elevated mortality, building a population-level case that rodenticides act as a chronic stressor on a mesopredator. By spanning sixteen years, the work captured how exposure tracked development and rodent-control practices, and it became central evidence in the scientific and policy effort to restrict anticoagulant poisons that move through urban food webs into wild felids.