Wild Cats of the World

Conserving cats starts with securing their habitat and prey in parks and reserves. Most of the world’s Tigers now live in protected areas or in landscapes with a protected nucleus. If those reserves disappear, so too would the wild Tiger. The immense challenge facing most of the world’s protected areas is inherent in the name – protection. As human populations continue to grow, the pressure for land and resources intensifies and so does illegal activity, clearing protected habitat and hunting wildlife. Even under protection, cats are not necessarily safe. The demand driven by traditional Asian medicinal beliefs for Tiger body parts (which have as much medicinal value as consuming a cow) is now so intense and the trade is so valuable that Tigers continue to be hunted in reserves across their range.

Yet protection clearly works. Tiger numbers have increased in India (Corbett National Park and the Western Ghats) and Nepal (Bardia and Chitwan National Parks) where governments, conservation NGOs and the donor community have committed the necessary resources to quell poaching and protect forest. Many of the world’s parks require a massive infusion of funding to achieve the same outcome. The Lion is now extinct in most of West Africa’s protected areas because those nations are among the poorest on earth; they cannot afford to safeguard their parks and Lion populations gradually winked out, mainly from pervasive human hunting of their prey species for meat. The last 250 West African lions will persist only if the four parks in which they still remain are vigorously protected. Their case is particularly dire but it is a harbinger for many felid populations around the world. Without parks, very well insulated from the worst anthropogenic impacts, most cat species would decline and some would vanish entirely.

Parks alone, especially poorly protected ones, do not guarantee the survival of many felid species. Human-modified landscapes dominate the globe and, despite their demanding ecological requirements, cats occupy many of them. Provided there is prey and habitat, felids can live close to people, typically in significantly lower densities than under strict protection, but imperative for their conservation nonetheless. In contrast to the Tiger and Lion, many of the world’s Cheetahs, Leopards, Snow Leopards and many other felids live outside formally protected areas. Anthropogenic landscapes also connect large protected tracts, allowing the movement of dispersers and their genetic contribution between core cat populations. However, wherever there are people – and especially their livestock – conflict is inevitable. People kill cats as a potential threat to our domestic animals and sometimes to people themselves, even when that threat is more perceived than real. Carnivores often kill very little livestock compared to other factors (although predation is occasionally devastating to individual herders) but pre-emptive and retaliatory killing of cats remains a global issue.

Saving cats in such landscapes relies on solutions that avoid conflict in the first place. Commercial sheep ranchers in Argentina use large livestock guarding dogs that mount an effective defense against Pumas, mitigating both predation on the herd and the traditional solution of employing a dedicated Puma bounty hunter to trap cats. In Snow Leopard range, conservationists vaccinate livestock against disease, a far greater source of mortality than carnivores. By reducing the losses to disease, herders can sell surplus stock to buy fodder for the lean winters which allows them to keep livestock in villages for an extra month or so when spring arrives. This keeps livestock away from the valley bottoms undergoing the spring flush of new grass, needed by wild ungulates that in turn support Snow Leopards. By the time livestock goes out grazing, Snow Leopards and their wild prey have dispersed and so too has the likelihood of conflict. Humans, livestock and cats can inhabit the same landscape, albeit often uneasily and with occasional losses on both sides, but it relies on investing in innovative and conscientious care of livestock. Unfortunately, many pastoralists around the world still choose the cheaper option of a bullet or poison.

ASSESSING STATUS

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (www.iucnredlist.org) evaluates species status based on multiple criteria including population size, degree of various threats, rate of population change and so on. From most to least threatened, the categories that apply to felids are Extinct (EX), Extinct in the Wild (EW), Critically Endangered (CR), Endangered (EN), Vulnerable (VU), Near Threatened (NT) and Least Concern (LC). All felids have been assessed at the species level and some regional populations or sub-species have been assessed separately, usually due to elevated concern, for example, the Lion in West Africa (Critically Endangered) compared to the Lion overall (Vulnerable). Until 2015 only one felid, the Iberian Lynx, was Critically Endangered at the species level, i.e. facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. Following a massive conservation effort, it is now assessed as Endangered. Downlisting a species indicates a decreased likelihood of extinction, not that it is ‘saved’. The Iberian Lynx is now more secure than when listed as CR in 2002 but it still faces serious threats and could decline again rapidly if conservation effort was relaxed. Downlisting is sometimes also the result of improved information – surveys indicating more populations than previously known, for example – rather than improved status as a result of conservation action. At the time of writing, a revision of Red List status is underway for all felids; the 2015 evaluation is provided where complete, otherwise it is from the previous assessment made in 2008 (indicated in the text).

Whether inside protected areas or outside them, conservation is more likely to take root if cats have a dollar value to the communities that live nearby. Ecotourism is one obvious solution. Africa’s great game reserves are famous for their big cats and are directly supported by the money spent by millions of tourists hoping to see them. India and Nepal’s Tiger reserves are similarly reliant on tourism and, only in the last decade, opportunities have arisen to view Iberian Lynx, Jaguars, Pumas and Snow Leopards in the wild. Although indispensable, tourism revenue will only ever protect a relatively small fraction of wild cat distribution. West Africa’s Lions declined precipitously in part because the region does not hold the tourism appeal enjoyed by the Serengeti or the Okavango Delta.

One option is to simply pay people to co-exist with cats. Most often, this takes the form of compensating people for the loss of livestock to carnivores in the hope it fosters tolerance. In reality, depredation is difficult to authenticate, carnivores are blamed for losses to other factors and falsifying claims inevitably creeps into the system. Being paid to put up with losses may even remove some incentive to reduce them, so the root cause of conflict goes unaddressed. Rather than paying for the negative value of living with cats, providing rewards or ‘performance payments’ is an intriguing alternative. Conservationists in northern Mexico pay ranchers for camera-trap photographs of Jaguars on private property. When the presence of Jaguars yields greater value than the cost of living with them (and it is crucial to adopt measures to reduce depredation alongside the payments), ranchers are less likely to kill cats. Similarly, where livestock is insured against losses to cats, herders have an incentive to better care for their herds. Just as with drivers whose vehicle insurance rates reflect the ability to avoid damage, farmers practicising sound husbandry have fewer losses and lower premiums. Helping poor pastoralists contribute to the premium may be all the incentive they require to stop killing cats.

Wild cats have been caged by people for millennia but does keeping cats in modern captivity contribute to their conservation? Captive populations potentially safeguard a reservoir of breeding individuals against the worst-case scenario of extinction in the wild. Saving the Iberian Lynx relied on a massive breeding program that now produces more Lynx kittens than can be accommodated in remaining wild habitat. It could not have succeeded without captive breeding although is the sole example of a captive felid population contributing directly to population recovery. A similar effort will soon release Persian Leopards in the Russian Caucasus; as with the Lynx, the offspring of captive adults will have opportunities to hunt in controlled conditions in the hope it better prepares them for survival in the wild. The vast majority of captive cats around the world will never be useful for this purpose.

More usefully, some zoos also contribute funding to in situ cat conservation (although globally it is an astonishingly tiny sum) and perhaps help foster a love for wild cats among urban human populations. The same cannot be said for circuses or Las Vegas stage shows keeping big cats for performances, which simply have no conservation value. Similarly, despite frequent assertions of conservation, private ownership and breeding of wild cats, especially in the United States, South Africa and a handful of other nations, plays next to no role in saving those species.

CONTROLLING TRADE

CITES (www.cites.org) is a treaty between 184 national governments to control international trade in live wildlife and their parts including furs, hunting trophies and souvenirs. The species covered by CITES are listed in three Appendices, according to the degree of protection they need. All wild cats are listed in Appendices I or II (the domestic cat is not classified). Appendix I covers species threatened with extinction, in which trade is permitted only in exceptional circumstances. Appendix II includes species not immediately threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled in order to avoid utilization that may threaten their survival.