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HOOKED ON FISHING CAT CONSERVATION
FIFI THE FISHING CAT. PHOTO CREDIT: DEVAN SEWELL, WILD OASIS (WWW.WILDOASIS.ORG). INSERT: ASHWIN NAIDU. PHOTO CREDIT: N. PRADEEP KUMAR.
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A former Carson Scholar and wild cat expert has established a non-profit organization to help save the endangered fishing cat of South and Southeast Asia.
Inspired by his colleagues and research at the UA, Ashwin Naidu co-founded the Fishing Cat Conservancy in 2014 to help monitor the cat, Prionailurus viverrinus, and educate the local community about the importance of the animals and their dwindling wetland habitat along the east coast of South India.
“Because of fish and shrimp farming and the demand that feeds the national and international markets, most of the habitat that is natural along these wetlands, rivers, delta areas, and mangroves has been destroyed,” said Naidu, a native of Andhra Pradesh, one of the 29 states of India and home to the Krishna Wildlife Sanctuary where the conservancy currently does most of its work.
About the size of a bobcat but stockier, fishing cats have partially webbed paws that allow them to swim and hunt their main prey, fish. Their ability to dive and catch fish underwater makes them unusual in the cat world; their affinity for water also makes them sensitive to the destruction of wetlands. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List for Threatened Species has listed fishing cats as endangered since 2008. With an extensive background studying wild cats, Naidu put the communications skills he learned as a 2012 Carson Scholar to work to launch the Fishing Cat Conservancy and its partner organization in India, the Eastern Ghats Wildlife Society. “I was able to do a lot of education and outreach events after I got the Carson Scholarship because they trained us to do public speaking and science communication,” Naidu said.
The data collected by the conservancy have yielded evidence of the presence of fishing cats in a number of areas along the east coast of southern India and revealed that one fishing cat returned to the same place to defecate—the first time this behavior in the species has been documented on camera. “That shows that these cats may be marking their territories and communicating with other individuals with scat at specific locations, which I call ‘scat stations,’” he said. With major support from Wild Oasis, Small Wild Cat Conservation Foundation, Mohammed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, Cincinnati Zoo, Safari West, Idea Wild, Feline Conservation Federation, and several individual donors, Naidu raised about $9,500 since December 2013 to run the conservation program; he hopes to raise at least $95,000 more to fully fund the organization for at least three more years—a nominal, sum, he said, that can go a long way for on-the-ground conservation in India. “The funding may be for a small cat, but it can have a big impact,” he said.
