Fishing Cats

In Context 

•  The Chilika Lake, Asia’s largest brackish water lagoon, has 176 fishing cats, according to a census conducted by Chilika Development Authority (CDA) in collaboration with The Fishing Cat Project (TFCP).

About the survey 

• It is the world’s first population estimation of the fishing cat, which has been conducted outside the protected area network.
• The estimation was conducted in two phases.
  • Phase-I was conducted in 2021 in the 115 sq km marshland present in the north and north-eastern section of Chilika and its surrounding areas. 
  • Phase II was conducted in 2022 in the Parikud side along the coastal islands of Chilika.

• A total of 150 camera traps were deployed in two phases with each fixed in the field for 30 days. 
  • Spatially Explicit Capture Recapture (SECR) method was used to analyse the data.

About Fishing cats

• Scientific Name : (Prionailurus viverrinus) 
• Description : Fishing cats are almost twice the size of the house cat. 
  • The fishing cat is an adept swimmer and enters water frequently to prey on fish as its name suggests.
  • The fishing cat is nocturnal and apart from fish also preys on frogs, crustaceans, snakes, birds, and scavenges on carcasses of larger animals.
• Habitat :
  • They occur in wetlands like marshlands, mangroves and flooded forests in major South and Southeast Asian river basins starting from Indus in Pakistan till Mekong in Vietnam and in the island nations of Sri Lanka and Java. 
  • 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.
• Conservation Status : IUCN Red List  :Endangered 
  • The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) lists the fishing cat on Appendix II part of Article IV of CITES, which governs international trade in this species. 
  • In India, the fishing cat is included in Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and thereby protected from hunting.

Source:TH