Five conservation projects working to protect the elusive Pallas’s cat awarded €50,000

09/04/2024 in RZSS

A record number of conservation projects working to protect the threatened Pallas’s cat have been awarded funding from the International Pallas’s Cat Conservation Alliance (PICA). €50,000 has been given to five projects, based in the species’ native countries of Mongolia, Nepal and China.

PICA, a collaborative conservation project between Nordens Ark, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and Snow Leopard Trust, awards funds annually from its Small Grant Programme to researchers and organisations operating in the Pallas’s cat wild range. The project works to increase knowledge of the Pallas's cat within the species' range, enhance capacity to deliver conservation action and increase global awareness of the species.

Emma Nygren, PICA project manager, said, “PICA’s small grants programme enables global projects to discover more about this elusive animal and the threats it faces in the wild. Without more information about these cats, we can’t deliver key conservation activities on the ground that are so important to restoring the species.”

“For the very first time, we have been able to award a Chinese based project funding, potentially allowing us new insights into a population we’ve never previously been able to study at this level. This is hugely important for conserving such a wide-ranging species as the Pallas’s cat, whose distribution spans across 16 countries.”

The PICA Small Grant Programme is possible thanks to a conservation fund supported by a number of zoos around the world. This collaboration is crucial to support research and conservation activity on the ground for Pallas’s cats.

Populations of Pallas’s cats across its expansive range are small, isolated and declining, with the species at risk of local or regional extinctions. As one of the world's least studied felines, the lack of knowledge limits the development of targeted conservation efforts for the species by projects like PICA and the zoos that support its work.

 

Image credit: Marie Matteson/Norden's Ark

Conservation projects that were awarded the PICA Small Grants:

Centre for Ecological Studies, Nepal - Assessing density, population genetics and mortality factors of Pallas’s cat in the Nepalese Himalaya

Nepal Pallas’s Cat Project, Nepal - Management of free-ranging dogs to reduce Pallas’s cat mortality in Annapurna Conservation Area

Chinese Felid Conservation Alliance, China - Conservation of Pallas's cat in desert area of northern Zhangye: searching for priority areas

Wildlife Science and Conservation Center of Mongolia, Mongolia - To conserve Pallas's cat in North-Eastern Mongolia

National University of Mongolia, Mongolia - Sustainable harvest and hunting practices on Pallas’s cat in Eastern Mongolia