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West Bengal: 385 fishing cats found in the Sunderbans in first such estimation
Fishing cats are medium-sized carnivores found all along south and south-east Asia. They are important bioindicators for many marshlands and wetlands as they act as a top predator in such terrains
The first estimation exercise of fishing cats done in West Bengal has found that at least 385 of these animals are reportedly living alongside tigers in the Sunderbans, the world’s largest mangrove delta.
“Fishing cat is the state animal of West Bengal. While this is the first such estimation of the cat in the state, it is the second estimation of fishing cats in India after Chilika in Odisha,” said S Jones Justin, deputy field director of the Sunderban Tiger Reserve (STR).
Fishing cats are medium-sized carnivores found all along south and south-east Asia. They are important bioindicators for many marshlands and wetlands as they act as a top predator in such terrains.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed the fishing cat as a globally vulnerable species and the Indian Wildlife Act, 1973 has listed it as a Schedule-I animal, giving it the highest protection.
“Tiger estimation, through camera trap exercise, is held every year in the Sunderbans. The fishing cat population inside the tiger reserve was done with the help of data collected during the tiger Census held in 2021. Around 450 pictures of the fishing cats were captured by the cameras installed in the forest. Out of these, at least 385 individuals were identified from their stripe patterns,” said an official.
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The Sunderbans spreads over India and Bangladesh. The Indian part of the reserve forest sprawls over 4,200 sq km, out of which the tiger reserve covers around 2,584 sq km. There are around 100 tigers in the Indian Sunderbans and an equal number in Bangladesh.
“This time, we have estimated the population of fishing cats in the STR portion. We plan to estimate the cat’s population in the entire Sunderbans (Indian area) during the next tiger Census,” said Jones.
About twice the size of a typical house cat, the fishing cat, as the name suggests, primarily preys on fish in wetlands and marshy lands. In India, they are mainly found in the mangrove forests of the Sunderbans, on the foothills of the Himalayas along the Ganga and Brahmaputra river valleys, and along the eastern coastline up to Andhra Pradesh.
“Their population is fast dwindling across the world because of habitat loss, accidents and retaliatory killings. The Ganga-Brahmaputra basin in West Bengal and Bangladesh is one of the most suitable places for this cat. This is a very important document as it gives us an estimation of the cat’s population in the tiger reserve. In future, if the cats become locally extinct in some places in West Bengal, the STR population may serve as a source to reintroduce them,” said Tiasa Adhya from the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission who has been researching on these cats for over a decade now and was associated with the estimation in the Sunderbans.
At least 176 cats were found in Chilika when the estimation was done in 2021 and 2022 by the Chilika Development Authority in collaboration with the Fishing Cat Project of the Fishing Cat Conservation Alliance, a global organisation of experts working on the felines across its range countries. Experts associated with the estimation said that the density of fishing cats in Chilika was 60 individuals per 100 sq km, which may be considered a very good density.
