Until recently, the statewide population of California’s bobcats (Lynx rufus) had never been studied with scientific rigor. The California Bobcat Population Monitoring Project was born out of the need for a better understanding of bobcats throughout the state and a 2019 legislative requirement for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to develop a statewide bobcat management strategy. Assembly Bill 1254 directed CDFW to carry out a five-year study culminating in a first-of-its-kind conservation and management plan for bobcats in California. Study goals included developing a statewide bobcat population estimate, an assessment of overall population health, investigations into human-bobcat conflict, and recommendations for management. Between 2021 and 2022, the CDFW bobcat team collected data at 48 study areas across the state using camera traps, fecal DNA analysis, and GPS collars, resulting in over 21 million photos, 3,000 scat samples, and 64,000 GPS locations. Here we summarize the details of data collection and results of the California Bobcat Population Monitoring Project, to date one of the most thorough investigations of bobcat populations nationwide.