Smaller cats give big cousins a run for their money in Bengal's tiger turf
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Kolkata: A recent study by the Wildlife Institute of India and the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) on lesser cats in tiger landscapes has found that of the nine lesser cat species in India, six are found in Bengal.
Assam is the only other state with the presence of six lesser cats.
During the All-India Tiger Estimation exercises, 26, 838 cameras were deployed in 2018-2019, followed by 32, 588 in 2022-2023, across the tiger-range forests in India. Camera trap pairs were placed in 2 square kilometre grids, designed to capture tiger, leopard along with other carnivores.
In Bengal, of the 200 grids surveyed, lesser cats — jungle cat, leopard cat, fishing cat, clouded leopard, marbled cat and Aisatic golden cat — were found occupying 166 grids.
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If taken into account an independent study on pangolins by city-based NGO HEAL in Purulia's Kotshila range, Bengal is also home to rusty spotted cat — world's smallest and lightest cat — that made its debut in the state's wild this Jan.
The study also highlighted Sundarbans as a stronghold for leopard cats. However, it also sounded alarm over the relatively low occupancy of jungle cats in the mangroves — the species which was found widely distributed in India.
Fishing cat presence remained moderate to high in the Sundarbans.
While leopard cat occupancy remained largely consistent across landscapes compared to 2018-19, Sundarbans represented a key stronghold for the species with consistently high occupancy, the study revealed.
However, even though the jungle cat is widely distributed across a variety of habitats from semi-arid regions to dense rainforests, its occupancy shows marked variation across landscapes.
"The Sundarbans mangrove ecosystem showed predominantly low occupancy, with only isolated pockets of moderate to high occupancy along its northern fringes," it said.
"Based on the single-season occupancy model, moderate to high occupancy was recorded for fishing cats in the Sundarbans, followed by Kaziranga and Orang tiger reserves in NE. In NE India and the Sundarbans, fishing cat occupancy remained largely unchanged, although a few peripheral grids outside protected areas exhibited declines," the study highlighted.
For marbled cats, the study decoded high occupancy in north Bengal's Neora Valley National Park and low occupancy in Buxa, Gorumara and Jaldapara national parks in the same region.
However, Buxa has recorded high occupancy of another lesser cat — clouded leopard. Whilemoderate occupancy was recorded in Neora Valley and Gorumara, its presence was found to be low in Jaldapara and Mahananda.
The occupancy of Asiatic golden cat, the largest among the Asian small cats, was found to be moderate in the forests of Neora Valley and Buxa, the study said.
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