“Locals from these areas are aware about these cats and how they are different from domestic ones. We have had the opportunity to successfully rescue and reunite these kittens with their mothers and have utilised the same reunion model that we follow for reuniting leopards cubs with their mothers,” said Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder, Wildlife SOS.Īll 26 kittens found in sugarcane fields, aged between 30 and 60 days, were reunited through 18 reunion events with three cases reported every year from 2014 to 2019 during early summer or early winter months of the sugarcane harvesting season. “The rusty-spotted cat is very rare to spot in the wild and is a hidden jewel in Indian biodiversity. The study concluded that such reunion protocols could be replicated for kittens or cubs of other wild cat species. All kittens were examined for injuries followed by a medical check before the reunion process. Kittens are generally separated from their mothers during the night considering their nocturnal activity pattern, during sugarcane cutting, their mothers stray in search of food or human disturbances. (The report published in Journal of Threatened Taxa) Junnar forest division were all the reunions were carried out in six years. With no specific conservation action plan for the habitat of these cats in India or an official census, IUCN estimates a 75% decline in their habitat over the next 10 years. In 2020, we rescued and reunited three such kittens with their mothers,” said JR Gowda, deputy conservator of forest, Junnar.Īuthors of the study included wildlife veterinarians and researchers Ajay Deshmukh, Yaduraj Khadpekar, Mahendra Dhore, and MV Baijuraj, some of whom have spent almost two decades in leopard conservation and conflict management in Junnar.Įndemic to India, Sri Lanka and areas along the Indo-Nepal border, the rusty-spotted cats are the smallest cat species in the world protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and listed as near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. “There is a large population of rusty-spotted cats across Junnar, Ambegaon and Shirur due to the favourable habitat for these species home to sufficient water and hiding places in sugarcane fields. Prior to this, a report in 2007 was the only one that highlighted a natural reunion.Īll reunions were carried out with the Maharashtra forest department. This is the first report from India on multiple reunion efforts for this cat species. The achievements of the team, part of wild animal conservation group Wildlife SOS, were published in a research paper in the Journal of Threatened Taxa on December 14. After numerous examples of leopard cubs being reunited with their mothers in the wild in Maharashtra, a team of researchers and wildlife rehabilitators managed to successfully reunite 26 rusty-spotted kittens with their mothers over a period of six years (2014-2019) in the Junnar forest division of the state.
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