- Small wild cat studies in India have witnessed a slow but substantial growth over the decades.
- A lack of attention on the species and sparse funding are seen as impediments to small cat studies.
- Two researchers, three decades apart, share their perspectives on where the studies stand, the learnings and what the future holds for research in the field.
Long before many realised that India was home to cats bigger than the average house cat but smaller than the charismatic cats in the wild, Shomita Mukherjee was tailing them. A lot of what we know of the small wild cat species in the country can be attributed to her relentless work to understand their diets, distribution, phylogeography and more.
“I was always fascinated and passionately fond of cats (all cats) ever since I could remember. I also love nature and this was an easy choice,” Mukherjee, who works as the senior principal scientist at Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) shares about how she got into small wild cat studies at a time the species were not even heard of. Serendipity intervened at the right time. In 1988, when she had just graduated, a Master’s programme on wildlife studies kicked off at the Wildlife Institute of India.
Mukherjee embarked on the journey with her Master’s dissertation in Keoladeo Ghana National Park, Bharatpur during the summer and monsoon of 1989 where she investigated habitat use and diet in jungle cats, fishing cats and golden jackals.
Nobody was studying small wild cats in India at that time, says Mukherjee, a member of the IUCN/SSC Cat Specialists Group who is currently leading global assessments of fishing cats and jungle cats. Her family, friends and teachers became her mentors, instilling in her the nuances of human interactions with the wild, tolerance, patience, communication and so on, which are essential to biodiversity conservation.
Well, to borrow an internet slang, Mukherkjee is the OG cat researcher of India, starting her work in the ’80s and continuing even today. Along the way, she facilitated the growth and work of many young scientists with a keen interest in small wild cats.
Divyashree Rana is one such researcher who represents a new generation of researchers advancing the study of small felids.
A brief and incidental encounter with a rusty-spotted cat image was all it took for Rana to fall in love with the species. “It was during an internship for the All-India Tiger Census in Kanha that I came across a camera trap picture of the rusty-spotted cat,” recalls Rana who is pursuing her PhD on the movement of wild cats across fragmented multi-use landscapes using genetic and spatial tools at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru. “But that’s all it took to inspire me to understand them better.”
That image of a small orange-brown cat with a distinctive bushy tail and a rodent in its mouth left her intrigued. She sought out more information about the world’s smallest wild cat, endemic to the Indian subcontinent. After days of research, she was amazed to discover the number of small wild cats in India and how little we knew about them. “Even after almost five years of working on them, I’ve barely scratched the surface of their underexplored world,” Rana says.
In this interview, Mukherjee and Rana take Mongabay India through their respective journeys as wild cat researchers. They describe how the field has changed over the years, the latest tools being utilised and the importance of continued research.
Mongabay: How has small wild cat study evolved over a period of time?
Shomita Mukherjee: Tremendously and it’s very heart-warming. The introduction of genetic tools has vastly improved our knowledge of the ecology and evolution of some species of small cats. There are also several new techniques and analytical tools that have boosted our understanding of small cats.
When I started out, even camera traps were not used in India and now that is the most common tool for small cat studies. Genetic tools were also introduced after I completed my doctoral work and I picked these up during my postdoctoral work at the NCBS in 2005. Now I see the power of these techniques to answer questions that I struggled with in terms of reliability of results.
Genetic tools give us insights into phylogeography (genetic patterns of a species over space), genetic diversity, phylogeny (how the species are related to each other) and population genetics. My study on genetic patterns of leopard cats from the maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA helped in refining our knowledge of the distribution of leopard cats in India – we now understand that they are unlikely to occur in areas where temperatures exceed 40 degrees Celsius during summer. Studies by others like Dr Divyashree Rana helped understand the population connectivity of fishing cats in the Indo-Nepal Terai landscape.
However, I would caution against treating technology as the sole path to knowledge. No amount of technology can save a poorly designed, executed or (most importantly) interpreted study. I see over and over again how results are misinterpreted due to a lack of reading or knowledge of natural history and basic ecological and evolutionary processes. The entire captive-breeding fiasco for small cats is a result of this.
Divyashree Rana: It all started with Shomita’s (Mukherjee) work in Rajasthan in the late 1980s, trying to understand how different carnivores coexist. Despite India being one of the most diverse countries for wild cats worldwide, our research is concentrated on a handful of species. Until very recently, the bulk of small cat research was limited to anecdotal records of species being discovered from unknown locations like the fishing cat in Panna Tiger Reserve or rusty-spotted cat in Balaram-Ambaji Wildlife Sanctuary.
Despite growing attention, the research is limited to by-catch data from surveys targeting larger species. You would notice a few research papers on jungle cats and/or rusty-spotted cats in the recent literature, but most of these were only possible because these species are found sympatric to tigers and hence camera traps placed for tigers yield insights into them as well. But this data is at best opportunistic and often misses out on many species, such as the small cats found in the northeast. Until the small cat research emerges from primary data from studies targeted at small cats, growth in literature and in-depth understanding would be limited.
Mongabay: What are the funding challenges you face? Has it changed over time?
Shomita Mukherjee: It is difficult to get a good substantial grant that would cover three to five years of work which is essential for strong inferences from results. I have managed to generate small grants but they come with their problems of logistics and results that lack statistical strength.
One of the reasons perhaps is that the entire conservation, and hence research, focuses on large carnivores, both globally and nationally because they are more vulnerable to threats due to several reasons. Further, large carnivores have been advertised as “charismatic” which also led to many researchers wanting to study “charismatic” species.
There are several small grants but these do not generate the same quality and quantum of data. Further, many of these grants are solely for conservation activities, which is great, but it comes with a caveat — the lack of important ecological studies/data that can help in monitoring responses to changes in habitat, diet, and behaviour. This is crucial to plan long-term conservation.
Divyashree Rana: I feel funding opportunities are slowly increasing for lesser studied species. There is some dedicated funding available for small cats, like the Panthera Small Cat Action Fund, that has been funding my research on fishing cats for almost five years now. Apart from that, in general, funding agencies are moving towards studies targeting lesser-known taxa and landscapes. This allows budding researchers like me to find opportunities for “risky” projects on elusive small cats.
However, the biggest challenge with most of these small grants is that they fund “conservation” projects. Although the rationale behind these grants is robust, they often undermine how little we actually know about these species to design conservation projects. These species require basic research on where they are, what they eat, how they survive in human-modified environments, before providing targeted solutions towards their conservation. Unfortunately, finding funding for such projects is very challenging.
This requires opportunities at larger synchronised platforms. Few projects in the recent past were initiated with similar goals like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) – funded Wildcats Project or the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India (MoEFCC) Species Recovery Programme for clouded leopards and caracals. However, the information regarding these projects remains privy to a few members or organisations, with limited benefits to independent researchers or students.
Mongabay: There is a lot of misinformation and a lack of understanding of small cats. Your pet peeves?
Shomita Mukherjee: One of the most disturbing pieces of misinformation is that some species of cats need captive breeding interventions to save them in the wild. This is a flawed logic because we all know that the primary threat is habitat destruction and degradation and not the cats’ inability to breed! Until we change our land policies or try to address local issues (after we identify them through research), no amount of captive breeding will save the species. A great example is that of the tiger. Tiger population had crashed dangerously at one point and Project Tiger was introduced, which aimed to save its habitat as well as address poaching. The tiger did not require captive breeding to restore its population. A huge amount of money and effort was placed towards research, policy and implementation of habitat and prey protection.
By research, I also mean monitoring, which brings me to the next piece of misinformation – of monitoring being different from research. Monitoring needs to be done scientifically to generate long-term data that has predictive statistical value. Often you have funding agencies that do not want to fund “pure research” (whatever that means).
For many species of small cats, we still do not have a strong understanding of their distributions or the factors that affect their choice of habitat. We do not know their diets. Knowledge of this could help design strong awareness and conservation programmes and counter local misunderstandings (also understood through research) if any.
Captive breeding is not going to provide that information; it’s a lot of money invested in an activity that would not succeed until ecological understanding is sound, especially if the aim is reintroduction. That money could be better utilised in generating information and implementing strategies and policies that would help safeguard populations in their natural habitats.
Divyashree Rana: The biggest myth – they are impossible to work with. If you study the right species in the right landscape, even a Master’s student can contribute to meaningful small cat research with limited resources and time. When I began my journey, my understanding was limited. When I started working in Terai, there was hardly any survey on fishing cats making the study a big challenge. But today, after working in the landscape for years, I can say what kind of research would be feasible and how.
Mongabay: What were some of the challenges you faced while pursuing your studies?
Shomita Mukherjee: The biggest challenge was generating information on such rare species with such meagre funding and time. Another challenge was being a woman and constantly balancing safety and comfort at work. Although I never really saw that as a major challenge until now; I realise now that so many instances that my women friends and I faced then, perhaps brought down the level of work we could do.
Back then, we did not bring these up so that we were not taken lightly and also to not let it interfere with work. Things have changed for the better now (though unfortunately, not for the safety of women) and women researchers in ecology are far more empowered, have support and know their rights.
Divyashree Rana: How elusive the species are and how little we know of them! As researchers we are used to thinking about our systems in a hypothetico-deductive manner in which we go in with assumptions and expectations of how the system would work and test our observations against those predictions. However, while planning my work with small cats, the biggest challenge I faced was where and how to start because of the lack of our basic understanding of the species.
Given the elusive nature of these cats coupled by our limited knowledge, students often face many doubts regarding the feasibility of the studies which are a major hurdle for anyone starting new in this field. The lack of experts in the field doesn’t help the case. Ironically, we have more small cat species in India than researchers who primarily work on small cats.
Mongabay: What’s the relevance of taking research and conservation of small wildcats outside protected areas (PA) and involving communities in the effort?
Shomita Mukherjee: Yes, surely research and conservation have moved beyond PAs. Most populations of small cats occur outside the PA network. Dr. Tiasa Adhya’s work in Chilika is a community-conservation-based effort and has been very successful despite several challenges. It is very tough to maintain the same success through the years because of changing administrations, changing policies and people’s aspirations. The effort has to be constant but is very important for species conservation.
Divyashree Rana: Most of the conservation efforts on small cats, particularly fishing cats, are based outside PAs. However, research till date has mostly been limited to PAs. Moving beyond that is extremely important, a direction in which my research is headed as well.
With multiple recent records, we know small cats can survive outside PAs, but as we have almost no systematic studies, it is difficult to comment on whether they have adapted or not. Finding species outside protected areas doesn’t equate to species thriving or adapting to those landscapes. Systematic studies are required to understand how these species are adjusting to human-modified landscapes. For example, in Terai where I work, there are extensive sugarcane fields where fishing cats are also found once in a while. However, while harvesting the crop, these cats are often disturbed leading to the abandonment of the litter. Hence, it is difficult to comment on how successful the populations outside PAs are and what threats they might face. Hence, expanding our scope to outside PAs and engaging in community-based efforts is the need of the hour.
Mongabay: Have there been long-term studies of small wild cats? What kind of results have they generated that have benefited science and conservation?
Shomita Mukherjee: The Fishing Cat Project in Chilika by Dr. Tiasa Adhya and her team has been running since 2016. From this research, we now know the density and behaviour of the species, the threats they face and how they fare in a human-dominated landscape.
Another study is by Dr Abi Tamim Vanak from ATREE who studied jungle cats and other co-occurring carnivores in an agricultural landscape in Maharashtra that generated data on home ranges of jungle cats in that region, their daily movement patterns and how they coexist with other carnivores.
Other long-term data on small cats has been generated through by-catch information from various tiger studies such as Wildlife Institute of India’s all-India tiger surveys, Dr. Dharmendra Khandal’s tiger monitoring programme around Ranthambore Tiger Reserve and nearby areas and so on. From these, we can infer their distributions around India; in some cases, estimate their densities and also monitor their abundances through relative indices.
Mongabay: Do you use genetic tools and technology in your studies? How have these tools helped in the study of understudied species like small wild cats?
Divyashree Rana: I primarily use genetic tools in my study. I realised early on that genetics is a useful and underemployed tool in small cat research. Camera traps are labour-intensive and require some understanding of communities and landscapes. However, genetic tools allow extracting useful information from non-invasive samples such as scats or shed hair. Optimised genetic tools can not only help you detect species but also allow identification of unique individuals from faecal samples alone.
When I started my work, I realised that apart from a lack of research, there was also a lack of systematic genetic approaches to generate this valuable information. An important part of my PhD work was to develop a tool, a set of genetic markers, which allows generating individual level information from faecal samples of wild cats. As cats are evolutionarily very close to each other, we could design a single set of markers which can work across cat species without requiring advanced optimisation. I am using the same tool to generate data for six cat species in Terai, where I work. I believe methodological advances like these can go a long way in allowing researchers to understand critical factors about these species.
As for drones and camera traps, I have very limited experience. However, outside of the country, these tools are revealing interesting insights about small cats along with radio collars. Another interesting avenue that we are yet to explore for small cats is the eDNA-based studies.
Mongabay: What would you like to see changed in small wild cat studies?
Divyashree Rana: More research, dedicated funds, emphasis on generating baselines, and synchronised platforms. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I am optimistic. Platforms like yours being interested in these details is the first step!
Explore Small Wildcat Portraits
Read more: A fishing cat survey indicates robust population density
Banner image: A fishing cat at the Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary in Andhra Pradesh. Small wild cat studies in India date back to over three decades and has seen growth but the information on the species remains limited, largely due to sparse funding. Image by Srichakra Pranav.
Credits
