Sandesh Kadur/www.felis.in
WORKING in the bamboo forests of Mizoram, north-east India, isn’t easy. Alongside torrential monsoons and poachers, there are armed separatist groups to contend with. Yet independent wildlife biologist , currently funded by UK conservation charity the Rufford Foundation, spent months at a time here to deploy and maintain in an effort to spot the country’s most elusive cats. Her persistence paid off: she produced the first ever estimate of the marbled cat population in continental Asia and discovered one of its highest recorded densities of clouded leopards.
Her three-year study, with zoologist at the University of Oxford, involved combing the thick jungle of the , which borders Bangladesh and Myanmar. It is a protected park – on paper, at least – but Dampa is a tiger refuge where she found scant evidence of tigers. Singh’s results suggest that the lack of bigger cats has allowed both marbled cats and clouded leopards to spend more time on the ground and grow in numbers – her estimates put both populations at about five individuals per 100 square kilometres.
Gunmen regularly traverse the forest. While Singh was there in 2015, one armed group kidnapped 22 local people who were building a road in the park, and held them hostage until a ransom was reportedly paid. Along with images of cats, Singh’s cameras , and the cameras themselves were routinely stolen.
India’s Border Security Force, police and forest guards patrol here, but are often unpaid for months, not to mention outgunned. Despite the dangers, for many nights Singh slept on the forest floor or in caves, unarmed and escorted by…
