News from other Fishing Cat range countries – Cambodian Fishing Cat Project

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Sad news from Java:

Fishing Cats Quietly Slink Out of Existence in Southeast Asia

22 March 2017 – Global Wildlife Conservation in Cat Watch blog, National Geographic

Snippet:

“After extensive camera trap surveys in key habitat failed to reveal a single fishing cat in Java, conservationists fear that the unique water-loving feline may be on the verge of extinction in Indonesia, if not already extirpated there.”

“If the fishing cat is gone from Indonesia, it is following the extinction of the Bali Tiger in the late 1930s and the Java Tiger in the mid-1970s,” says Frederic Launay from Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, which helped fund the most recent camera trap surveys that wrapped up at the end of October 2016 and targeted habitat that scientists had not surveyed previously. “This is sad news, but we hope that we are proved wrong and the fishing cat is re-discovered on Java. Nevertheless, fishing cats still exist across a wide range and our focus should be on assessing population health and reducing threats elsewhere.”

…“We’re seeing a southern and southeast Asian cat become strictly a South Asian cat because of habitat loss, poaching and retaliatory killing,” says Jim Sanderson, manager of Global Wildlife Conservation’s Small Wild Cat Conservation Program.

…In an attempt to assess the status of fishing cat populations across its range, the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, with help from the Small Cat Conservation Foundation and GWC, has supported 19 fishing cat projects with $155,000 over the past three years. Sanderson plans to travel to Myanmar this year to assess the species’ population there with the help of local conservationists.

“My hope is that by calling attention to the rarity of fishing cats on Java and in other Southeast Asian countries, heroic efforts can be made to locate them as soon as possible so that conservationists can launch efforts to save them in places they still exist. We must not let them slip away without trying,” Sanderson says. “