\u201cSome time back, I saw some dead fish in my pond,\u201d Khan said, adding that he suspected a common leopard may have attacked and killed the fish. That prompted him to take up the drastic measure of placing the whole pond under surveillance.<\/p>\n
According to IUCN, the global conservation authority, fishing cats survive in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand. They are believed to have gone extinct in Indonesia and Vietnam. According to its estimates, between 3,194 and 7,527 individuals survive in the wild, most of them in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In Nepal, where there is lack of adequate research, the population is estimated to be around a few hundred, concentrated around protected areas and fish ponds around them.<\/p>\n
Ponds such as Khan\u2019s dot Kapilvastu, the historic homeland of Siddhartha Gautama. Since 2015, the fish farming area here has nearly doubled from 700-1,200 hectares (1,730-2,965 acres), transforming the landscape into a patchwork of human-made wetlands suitable for fishing cats.<\/p>\n
Among local fishers, the fishing cat\u2019s reputation precedes it, often unfairly. Rumors of night raids and voracious appetites circulate quickly, inflaming tensions despite limited evidence of significant fish loss.<\/p>\n Around three years ago, a fishing cat was killed in the Bahadurganj area of Kapilvastu after farmers found it eating fish, according to local residents, who didn\u2019t want to be named, as killing fishing cats is against the law. When Mongabay inquired about it with local farmers, they said the animal was killed as people mistook it for a common leopard (Panthera pardus). Similarly, they also talked about the death of a fishing cat near a pond around eight years ago, after security guards attacked it for preying on fish.<\/p>\n IUCN also states that in most countries where the cats are found, fishing cats are killed in retaliation for perceived livestock losses. This, along with fragmentation of habitat, and an increase in pollution due to the expansion of commercial aquaculture, have increased challenges in their conservation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought that if we didn\u2019t intervene, we could lose a lot of fish to the cats,\u201d said Khan, who invested around 135,000 rupees ($1,000) in his private surveillance system.<\/p>\n Listening to calls from farmers such as Khan, forester and conservationist Ganesh Puri, who worked at the division forest office between 2017 and 2023, came up with the idea of \u201cfish banks\u201d to address the problem. \u201cWe used to receive calls from farmers saying that an animal is killing their fish,\u201d Puri, who is now stationed in Sindhuli, around 500 km (310 mi) east of Kapilvastu, told Mongabay over the phone.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter consulting experts, we set up camera traps and confirmed that a fishing cat was killing the fish.\u201d<\/p>\n The idea was simple. Puri received a grant from the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund to create a fish bank under his Western Terai Fishing Cat Project. The community-run bank would compensate fishery owners who would lose their fish to the cats. But the compensation wouldn\u2019t come in the form of cash, it would come in the form of fish. This would make farmers aware of the importance of fishing cats, and as compensation is guaranteed, they would not retaliate against or kill the fishing cats, Puri said.<\/p>\n Thanks to Puri\u2019s awareness programs, farmers such as Khan learned about the existence of fishing cats. Before Puri\u2019s program, they thought the animal consuming their fish was a common leopard. \u201cHe also told us about the ecological importance of fishing cats,\u201d Khan added. In addition to this, fish farmers said they felt reluctant to kill the animal, as local folklore says that anyone involved in killing a cat shall suffer from neurological disorders and tremble.<\/p>\n But as the project ran out of funds and Puri was transferred to another office, it couldn\u2019t be sustained. The fishing banks\u2019 critics argue that while Puri\u2019s intention was to promote the conservation of the cats, it may have sent a wrong message to some members of the community that the animal only eats fish, and to keep their fish safe, they need to kill the fishing cats.<\/p>\n Basanta Belbase, another fish farmer, said the fish bank could have had unintended consequences detrimental to the conservation of fishing cats in the area. \u201cFor example, before the idea of the fish bank came, I didn\u2019t know that there were certain cats that eat fish,\u201d he said. \u201cSome members of the community may have perceived that fishing cats are the biggest enemies of farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n The scientific message on this issue, however, is pretty clear. A recent study by Rama Mishra from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and her team found that the fishing cats in Nepal are generalists when it comes to food and while they do eat fish, they rely more on mammals and birds.<\/p>\n The most common type of food they found in the scat was from mammals, which made up about 39% of what the cats had eaten. Birds were next at around 27%, followed by fish at about 15%. Reptiles and snakes came in at roughly 12%. Insects, amphibians, mollusks and crabs were found in much smaller amounts, each making up less than 4% of the total. The study also found evidence that fishing cats prey on domestic or farm animals such as chickens and livestock.<\/p>\n \u201cOur study shows that fishing cats don\u2019t rely entirely on fish for survival,\u201d Mishra said. \u201cAlso, their density in Nepal has been found to be relatively low compared to other countries,\u201d she added. In addition to this, the cats may actually be helping the fishery owners in an ecological sense by preying on other animals that may also consume fish, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to understand that fishing cats are not the only predators of fish in Kapilvastu,\u201d said Humnath Bhattarai, vice chair of the Federation of Community Forestry Users Nepal (FECOFUN), Lumbini province. \u201cI have seen with my own eyes snakes, birds and jackals prey on fish,\u201d added Bhattarai, a member of the Laxmanghat community forest user group that also rears fish.<\/p>\n While the fish bank concept seemed to provide a quick fix to the complex relationship between farmers and cats, such quick fixes rarely work in conservation, Mishra said. \u201cAny intervention in conservation needs to be based on science and informed by numbers,\u201d she told Mongabay. To address the issue of human-fishing cat conflict, the first thing that needs to be done is to assess the population of the fishing cats in the area and their diet, which hasn\u2019t been carried out, she said.<\/p>\n In addition to this, people need to be made aware that the fishing cats are their friends, not foes, as they perform important ecological functions and help keep the fish healthy, said Sagar Dahal, another fishing cat researcher.<\/p>\n When people understand the behavior and diet of fishing cats, they will likely become more tolerant toward them, he added. \u201cFishing cats prey on snakes and birds that feed on fish,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, after monitoring his pond for more than a month, Khan also discovered that it wasn\u2019t just fishing cats that were eating his fish. Jackals were also doing it. \u201cIt\u2019s all part of the ecosystem where one animal feeds on the other,\u201d he added. \u201cNow that we know this, we don\u2019t retaliate against fishing cats,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n