HEAL Participates at the Inaugural Indian Wildlife Ecology Conference
14-16 June 2024
We are pleased to share that team HEAL was at the inaugural Indian Wildlife Ecology Conference ( @iwec_24 ) held between 14th and 16th June 2024 at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore
Our project coordinator, Aditya Banerjee, presented ongoing work related to fishing cats at the Small Cats Special Interest Group meeting. The meeting was co-convened by our Joint Secretary Tiasa Adhya and Dr. Shomita Mukherjee, Senior Principle Scientist at SACON-WII, as an opportunity to discuss research work on small cats, an often overlooked yet extremely significant taxon that experiences a range of threats in India.
Aditya’s presentation delved into estimation of global population of fishing cats from updated rangewide species distribution. This is an effort being undertaken by our partner The Fishing Cat Project, and the Fishing Cat Conservation Alliance to develop a protocol to better monitor the status of the fishing cat taking into consideration the progressive decline in the health and extent of wetlands, which are primary habitats of the fishing cat.
Discussing this ongoing work at the SIG allowed us to get feedback and inputs on obtaining the global population estimation and species distribution of fishing cats in a robust, efficient and near-precise manner, which will be immensely significant in assessing the global status of the cat, which is also the flagship of critically threatened wetland habitat.