Rare Fishing Cat Sighted
Pithoragarh, July 18 Scientists from Wild Life institute of India (WII) at Dehradun have discovered a rare red listed specie of cat in Sharda forest range of Tanakpur region of Champawat district.
” Fishing cat,, that looks like a leopard, was trapped in cameras in Sharda range, where the camera traps were installed in Nandhor forest range to find out presence of rare varieties of Fauna in these dense forests.”said Navin Chandra Joshi, a scientist with WII Dehradun.
According to Joshi, the specie of cate that named so due to its preferabce of fish in prey, is find south and southeast countries specially in India, Bangladesh, china, Combodia Indonesia,Mynmar Nepal, Pakistan Srilanka and Thailand.”Due to been rare viewing the specie has been put into red list of fauna by by concerning agencies.”said the WII scientist.
According to the scientists, the fishing cat, mostly double in size of normal cat, finds by water bodies to find fishes as it’s prefered food.”The West Bengal government had declared it as state animal in the year 2012.” Said Joshi.
According to scientists, the causes of its been defunct are lack of wetlands,due to increasing urbanisation and industrialisation.
