Young bobcat found injured in DuPage County now being rehabilitated for release

The DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center is caring for a young female bobcat that was found badly injured possibly by a car.

On their Facebook page, the conservation center said they believe the bobcat is either an early spring baby that lost a mother too soon or a late baby from 2025. They said she was found minimally responsive in a person's yard after possibly being struck by a car.

The person who found her contacted a "responsibly wildlife trapper," who contained the bobcat and brought it to Oaken Acres Wildlife Center, who transferred her to the DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center.

The center said it hasn't worked with a bobcat since 2018. After sedating her at intake, they examined her and found she was in pretty good health aside from some fluid in her abdomen, some fleas and ticks, a fracture to her scapula and trauma to one of her hips which were old and healed, and a badly fractured canine tooth.

According to the wildlife center, the broken tooth needed to be addressed, but it can be challenging to remove them without drilling out bone. The organization said their dental unit was able to help with the extraction, along with multiple other staff and visiting veterinarians.

The conservationists aid she is now recovering, but noted wild bobcats can become stressed when they are in human care. They are hoping to move her from an indoor run to an outdoor enclosure as quickly as possible, and limit their handling. Eventually, she will be released back into the wild where she was found – but further from the road, they noted.

Bobcats are native to Illinois and are in fact the state's only wild cat species, but they are solitary and nocturnal and interactions with humans are very rare.

In 2021, a bobcat was spotted in Sand Ridge Savanna Nature Preserve in Will County by a wildlife ecologist who was recording with a camouflaged camera attached to a tree.