- The shy and nocturnal rusty-spotted cat, thought-about the smallest cat species on the planet, stays understudied in India.
- While there are nationwide initiatives to preserve essential wildcat landscapes and captive breeding programmes to enhance the inhabitants of small cats, some wildlife specialists say that the conservation practices for small cats are too tiger-centric, which will not be conducive for the rusty-spotted cat.
- Researchers recommend utilising digicam traps, GPS mapping, scat evaluation and radio telemetry to watch small cats and study extra about their position within the ecosystem, and name for extra in-depth research.
Rusty-spotted cats are believed to be pretty distributed in lots of components of India, and Nepal and Sri Lanka, however detailed details about their behaviour, habitat, and their total position within the ecosystem service is missing. Although remoted makes an attempt have been made not too long ago in numerous forest areas to determine inhabitants density, in depth and in-depth research are wanted to formulate environment friendly conservation methods, say wildlife specialists.
Rusty-spotted cats are thought-about the world’s smallest cat species, weighing lower than 1.5 kilograms, about half the scale of a home cat. They have a fawn-grey colored coat with their eponymous rusty spots on their again and flanks. The species has been recorded in dry deciduous and semi-deciduous forests in northern and central India, western ghats, Kachchh and Rajasthan, and peninsular India, apart from Nepal and Sri Lanka. It is assessed as ‘near threatened’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Shomita Mukherjee, a member of the IUCN cat specialist group says, “These cats are shy and nocturnal and difficult to study. After years of research, we have only a little amount of data about them. There is no baseline, we need more research.”
Only earlier this 12 months, India’s surroundings ministry launched a nation-wide mission to review small cat species, together with rusty-spotted cats, to study extra about their behaviour and distribution.
Studying the shifty small cat
In the previous, a couple of devoted research have been performed on the rusty-spotted cat in India. Between 2017 and 2019, Mukherjee performed a mission on small wild cats in Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) close to Mumbai, with the participation of 35 citizen volunteers. The volunteers collected scat samples, placed digicam traps and took part in knowledge evaluation.
The elusive nature of the small wild cats makes them arduous to identify, and subsequently research. Mukherjee suggests utilising digicam traps which might be used for tiger census with small grid sizes, to review the home vary motion of small cats together with the rusty-spotted cats. “We can use GPS mapping to know about their locations and density. Moreover, DNA extracted from their scat can be helpful to know what species of rodents they eat. We had found broken jaws in one such scat in SGNP. Such kind of information is crucial,” she explains.
While the prey base of rusty-spotted cats is just not correctly documented, their eating regimen primarily consists of rodents and small reptiles. Another research in Madhya Pradesh’s Kanha National Park, performed from 2014 to 2018, recorded the cats carrying rodent kills within the digicam entice photographs.
Researchers and wildlife specialists use instruments resembling GPS mapping, scat evaluation, digicam traps (often as by-catch knowledge from camera-trap workouts to determine tiger inhabitants), and radiotelemetry to review small cats.
“Unlike tigers, we do not know much about the ecological significance of rusty-spotted cats. Genetic analysis of its scat can help us assess their food habits and prey,” says Dharmendra Khandal, conservation biologist on the NGO Tiger Watch.
Though elusive, rusty-spotted cats are extensively distributed, Khandal provides. “We compiled data about sightings of these cats in Rajasthan. They were found in rocky areas and make smooth movement through thorny bushes, shrubs and thickets.”
The research from Kanha additionally instructed that rusty-spotted cats have made forested areas their habitat, which was stunning because it was beforehand thought that the species was solely present in rocky terrains, not-so-dense forests, and close to crop fields.
Read extra: Small cats in huge hassle: Why we have to save these elusive endangered species
In the identify of the tiger
The research from Kanha additionally highlights one other side of small cat conservation makes an attempt. Some researchers consider that conservation practices for small cats just like the rusty-spotted cat are too tiger-centric, which will not be conducive for the rusty-spotted cat. The give attention to enhancing the tiger inhabitants by forest administration and prey improve doesn’t bode properly for the survival of rusty-spotted cats, finds the research.
“Rusty-spotted cats are protected and do well under tiger as the umbrella species for biodiversity conservation. However, things become concerning when protected areas are artificially manipulated to enhance the tiger population,” says Y.V. Jhala, former dean of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), one of many authors of the research.
“Grasslands are created to increase the number of herbivores like spotted deer in order to increase the number of tigers. However, this kind of management is detrimental for rusty-spotted cats,” he continues.
The research argues that the extremely focal strategy of how these reserves are intensively managed to boost tiger and prey populations, will not be adequate for some species that favor habitat and prey which might be totally different from these of the tiger. “It is, therefore, important to conduct in-depth studies in tiger reserves on other less charismatic species, including the rusty-spotted cat, to ensure that the umbrella benefits of protecting and conserving the tiger are spread across the entire biota,” it states.
Conservation measures
All small cats are essential from an ecological perspective and are sentinels of local weather change, says Rajesh Gopal, Secretary General of Global Tiger Forum (GTF).
GTF and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), with state governments of Arunachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, launched a mission referred to as, ‘Strengthening conservation and resilience of worldwide vital wild cat landscapes by a give attention to small cat and leopard conservation‘, to preserve the globally vital wild cat landscapes in northern, north-eastern and western India by a panorama conservation strategy. “Our focus is on how to protect small cats, including rusty-spotted cats, both inside and outside protected areas. The programme involves the study of habit and habitat of these cats, to draft a conservation action plan,” Gopal says.
Community stewardship is a vital a part of the programme. “It is a pilot project. We will see how to involve stakeholders including people in the conservation efforts and protection of the small cats,” Gopal says.
Khandal factors out that maybe an essential first step must be creating consciousness amongst village residents exterior protected areas and farmers, who can’t determine rusty-spotted cats. “They mistake rusty-spotted cats for house cats. It is the same for desert cats as well,” he says. Small wild cats in India, usually turn into victims of retaliatory killing or dislocation as a result of misidentification as extra harmful cats.
As one other conservation measure, the SGNP has initiated an enriched captive breeding programme for rusty-spotted cats, probably the primary such programme for a small cat in India. This breeding programme provides circumstances/environment in captive breeding, which mimic the cat’s wild habitat. Experts from the UK are aiding the SGNP within the ‘enrichment’ of the breeding facility.
As of January 2023, the captive breeding facility had two kittens of rusty-spotted cats, that have been rescued from Maharashtra’s Satara. “Unless a conducive environment is provided, rusty-spotted cats will not breed. We have mimicked natural conditions in the new breeding facility, such as a particular temperature, hollow logs, among others,” says an SGNP official, who wished to stay nameless.
Previous makes an attempt on the captive breeding of rusty-spotted cats in common cages in SGNP, didn’t finish in success. The officers are hopeful that captive breeding within the new facility shall be profitable. “Our objective of captive breeding is conservation and ensuring an adequate population. The cats can then be released in areas where the population has dwindled,” the official provides.
Read extra: [Commentary] Keeping wildlife wild: Learnings from rehabilitating the world’s smallest wild cat
Banner picture: A rusty-spotted cat in Anamali Hills. Photo by Divya Mudappa/Wikimedia Commons.
