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CATnews 52 Spring 2010
24
JIMMY BORAH1, TRIDIP SHARMA2, SALVADOR LYNGDOH3 AND TANA TAPI4
First photograph of a clouded
leopard at Pakke Tiger
Reserve, India
The clouded leopard Neofelis nebulosa which is reported from countries of South
East Asia is a rare felid and very little information is available from its geographic
range. We present here the first instance of photo-capturing clouded leopard by
camera traps in Assam Valley tropical semi-evergreen forest of Pakke Tiger Reserve,
Arunachal Pradesh, India. Habitat destruction and hunting are the main threats that
these animals face and strict regulations is needed to save these beautiful felid.
The clouded leopard, which is reported from
the forests of Nepal, Bhutan, India, Myanmar,
southern China and Malayan countries (Pra-
ter 1980, Sanderson et al. 2008), is a rare and
endangered felid. It is listed as a Scheduled
I species under the Wildlife (Protection) Act
of India, 1972 and classified as vulnerable by
IUCN (Sanderson et al. 2008). Clouded leo-
pard have been reported from primary ever-
green forests (Sunquist & Sunquist 2002),
secondary logged forests (Rabinowitz et al.
1987), coastal hardwood forests and coni-
ferous forests (Rabinowitz 1988) and grass-
lands (Santiapillai & Ashby 1988). It has been
reported in India from the northeastern states
of Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh,
Tripura, Mizoram, Sikkim and northern parts
of West Bengal (Katti et al. 1990, Choudhu-
ry 1993, Ghose 2002), and it is widely held
that the wild populations are declining and
in need of protection. Looking like a big cat
in miniature, the clouded leopard has the po-
werful, robust build of a large cat, with a long
tail typically equivalent to head-body length,
short communication
and the legs are short, with broad paws. The
fur is instantly recognizable, with its distinc-
tive cloud shaped markings and coat color va-
ries from dark grey to pale yellowish brown.
Study area
Pakke Tiger Reserve (Pakke TR), 92°36‘ –
93°09‘ E and 26°54‘ – 27°16‘ N, is situated in
the East and West Kameng District of Arun-
achal Pradesh at the foothills of Lesser Hima-
layas. Being declared as a sanctuary in 1977,
the conservation focus in Pakke has been
the tiger as the flagship species. Pakke TR is
spread over 862 km2. The area has great bio-
logical significance due to the richness of its
flora and fauna, a result of its location at the
Oriental and the Indo-Malayan realm and has
been considered as one of hot-spots for bio-
diversity (Myers 1991). The area has subtro-
pical climate with cold weather from Novem-
ber to March. It receives rainfall from both
south-west (May-September) and north-east
monsoons (November-April). Temperature in
the summer goes up to 30° C and goes down
to 2° C in the winter. The general vegetati-
on type of the Pakke is classified as Assam
Valley tropical semi-evergreen forest (Cham-
pion & Seth 1968) dominated by species of
Euphorbiaceae, Lauraceae, Meliaceae, Ana-
cardiaceae and Annonaceae and made up of
tropical evergreen, tropical semi-evergreen
and secondary moist bamboo tracts.
Methods
WWF-India’s North Bank Landscape Con-
servation Programme carried out a study on
monitoring tigers, co-predators, prey and its
habitat in Pakke TR in association with the
State Forest Department, Arunachal Pradesh.
As a part of the study, we used passive ca-
mera traps (Moultrie D-40, Moultrie Feeders,
Alabama) to gather direct evidence of the
different target species. Camera traps were
deployed in systemic grid based manner to
cover a uniform area across the tiger reserve.
The distance between each camera trap sta-
tion was kept at 2-3 km while ensuring that
one trap station was present in each grid of 4
km2. Each camera trap was running 24 hours
continuously for 54 days yielding a total effort
of 1080 camera trap nights.
Result and discussion
On the 3rd sampling night, we photo captured
a clouded leopard (Fig. 1) in our 5th trap sta-
tion (27° 00’ 20.2” N / 92° 52’ 05.3” E, 144 m
asl), at 2334 h. The habitat near the trap was
of mixed type with Altingia excelsa, Dillenia
indica and Canarium strictum being the major
trees near the trap station.
A clouded leopard was sighted by Shri Pratap
Singh, (a senior forest officer from Arunachal
Pradesh Forest Department) in 1994, about
one km away from Seijusa town in reserved
forest at the border of Arunachal Pradesh
and Assam. Athreya & Johnsingh (1995)
found evidence of clouded leopard in Pakke,
although no photographic evidence of a live
animal could be obtained by them in camera
traps, which may be attributed to relatively
short trapping duration with limited number
of cameras. Two male clouded leopard cubs
were found in forests of the Lower Subansiri
district in 1995, which are still alive now at
Itanagar Zoo (Dey 1995). Datta (1998) also
found evidences of clouded leopard in the
area. We also found evidence of clouded le-
opard in the form of skins in nearby villages
namely Pakke Kessang near Pakke TR. Some
of the forest staff also accounted sighting the
animal inside the reserve which we confir-
med by showing the pictures of the animal Fig. 1. Clouded leopard photo-captured in Pakke Tiger Reserve, Arunachal Pradesh, India
CATnews 52 Spring 2010
25
short communication
to them. None of them had any confusion in
identifying the clouded leopard from the pic-
tures that we showed to them.
The main threat to the clouded leopard in
the region is hunting by local villagers for its
beautiful pelt and canines, and proper mea-
sures are required to minimize these threats
as well as to establish a regional manage-
ment plan.
Acknowledgement
We thank Aircel and WWF-Sweden for the support
to carry out the field study. We also acknowledge
the staffs of WWF-India’s field office at Tezpur and
head office at New Delhi for their kind support and
encouragement. We are grateful to the field staffs
of Pakke Wildlife Division, particularly Mallo Kino
and Julie Welly for their assistance in the field.
Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for the helpful
comments and suggestions.
References
Athreya V. R. & Johnsingh A. J. T. 1995. Survey
of the clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) in
Northeast India. Unpublished report. Wildlife
Institute of India, Dehradun.
Champion H. G. & Seth S. K. 1968. The Forest Types
of India. The Manager of Publications, Delhi.
Choudhury A. 1993. The clouded leopard in Assam.
Oryx 27, 51-53.
Datta A. 1998. Evidence of clouded leopard Neofe-
lis nebulosa in Pakhui Wildife Sanctuary, Arun-
achal Pradesh. Journal of the Bombay Natural
History Society 95, 498-499.
Dey S. 1995. New site confirmed for clouded leo-
pard- a globally threatened species. Arunachal
Pradesh Forest News, 37-38.
Ghose D. 2002. First sighting of clouded leopard
Neofelis nebulosa from the Blue Mountain
National Park, Mizoram, India. Current Science
83, 20-21.
Katti K. V., Manrekar N., Mukherjee S. & Sharma
D. 1990. A report on wildlife survey in Arun-
achal Pradesh with special reference to Takin.
Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.
Myers N. 1991. The biodiversity challenge: Expan-
ded “hotspots” analysis. Environmentalist 10,
243-256.
Prater S. H. 1980. The Book of Indian Animals,
Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai.
Rabinowitz A. R., Andua P. & Chai P. P. 1987. The clouded
leopard in Malaysian Borneo. Oryx 22, 107-111.
Rabinowitz A. R. 1988. The clouded leopard in Tai-
wan. Oryx 22, 46-47.
Sanderson J., Khan J., Grassman L. & Mallon D.
P. 2008. Neofelis nebulosa. In: IUCN 2010.
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version
2010.1. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded
on 20 April 2010.
Santiapillai C. & Ashby K. R. 1988. The clouded
leopard in Sumatra. Oryx 22, 44-45.
Sunquist M. E. & Sunquist F. 2002. Wild cats of
the world. University of Chicago Press, Chica-
go, Illinois.
1 Senior project officer c/o WWF-India, Parbati
Nagar, Tezpur-784001, Assam, India
< jimmyborah@gmail.com>
2 Field Volunteer, North Bank Landscape, WWF-
India, Tezpur, Assam
3 Junior Research Fellow, Wildlife Institute of
India, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
4 Divisional Forest Officer, Pakke Wildlife Division,
Seijusa, Arunachal Pradesh, India
JIM SANDERSON1
Kodkod: guigna or pampas
cat?
The common name kodkod is sometimes used in place of the common name guigna
(gween-ya) when referring to Leopardus guigna. In the region where the guigna oc-
curs, most Argentineans and Chileans use the term huiña (ween-ya); the term kodkod
is never used. This curious fact begs the question: what is the origin of the term
kodkod and what wild cat does it refer to?
The diminutive guigna is a native of south-
central Chile and a small part of Argentina.
When Charles Darwin passed through the
region between 1831 and 1836 the region
was heavily forested from the coast of Chi-
le east to the foothills of the Andes where
many lakes are found. Before the arrival of
Europeans the so-called lakes district of Chile
was occupied by Mapuche, one of many Na-
tive American groups inhabiting the region.
Of relevance here is that the Mapuche had
specific names for the wildlife, including wild
cats that inhabited the lakes district.
Pascaul Coña, a Spanish priest, lived among
the Mapuche carrying out the labors asso-
ciated with his belief system. In Spanish,
the alphabetic letter “ñ” is n-yah so that
Coña is pronounced Cone-yah. In 1930, Coña
published his book “testimonio [sic] de un
cacique mapuche” in the original Mapuche
language (left side below) side-by-side with
a Spanish translation (right side below).
Realizing the Mapuche were rapidly being
replaced by the Spanish and that their know-
ledge gathered over more than a thousand
years was rapidly being forgotten, Coña pro-
duced a written record of the knowledge of a
Mapuche cacique, or person of great impor-
tance (a Ponco or chief). The cacique’s know-
ledge of the zoology of the region begins on
page 107 with the wild cats and continues
on page 108. Note that Coña attempted to
produce the sounds of the Mapuche words
using Spanish, Greek, and German since the
Mapuche had no written language. Footnotes
were also included in the text on pages 107
and 108. How is it possible that so few lines
of text have led to such great confusion and
Title page of Pasual Coña‘s testimonio de
un cacique mapuche
