India’s first Fishing Cat collaring project

• The Wildlife Institute of India (WII-Dehradun) Conservation Biologists will begin collaring ten Fishing Cats (Prionailurus viverrinus) in the Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS) in Andhra Pradesh next week.

*The nation’s first Fishing Cat collaring venture is led by Conservation Biologist Dr. Bilal Habib, WII-Dehradun.

*In Asia, a similar project was done earlier in Bangladesh.

Collaring project

• The project was supposed to launch last year but got delayed due to the spread of COVID-19.
• The Andhra Pradesh State Forest Department has already released the fund, which was funded by the Vedanta group, for the project.
• The Ministry of Atmosphere, Forest and Local Weather Change had permitted the capturing and collaring of the Fishing Cat.
• The collaring project looks at the Fishing Cat estimate, collaring and studying how the wildlife is surviving in the sanctuary.
• Experts from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII-Dehradun) and the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department will study the 10 fishing cats (Prionailurus viverrinus) in the Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary in the Godavari estuary.
• They will observe the species’ ecology, home range, behaviour in different seasons, feeding habits, threats, movements and use of space.
• The census was conducted in 2018 and 115 Fishing Cats were recorded.
• The three-year project is expected to be grounded in a few weeks in the sanctuary’s 235.7-sq. km mangrove ecosystem, capturing the fishing cats and collaring them with light weight equipment containing the Geographical Information System.
• Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS) in Andhra Pradesh is still struggling to be declared as a ‘Ramsar Convention Site’ despite various threats to its ecology.

Prionailurus viverrinus

• Fishing cats, P. viverrinus are found in scattered areas of the Oriental Region. They inhabit the peninsular region of India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, and Pakistan.
• Fishing cats live primarily in wetland areas, both marshes and swamps.
• Fishing cats are considered one of the largest of the lesser cats.
• The size of P. viverrinus varies with gender, males are considerably larger.
• Fishing cats are best described as piscivores.
• The fishing cat is nocturnal and apart from fish also preys on frogs, crustaceans, snakes, birds, and scavenges on carcasses of larger animals.
• The fishing cat is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, which means that it faces a high threat of extinction in the wild.
• In India, fishing cats are mainly found in the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans, on the foothills of the Himalayas along the Ganga and Brahmaputra river valleys and in the Western Ghats.