Finally I’m able to put some updates on this website. So much has happened and the followings describe our activities in the past several months.

Ecological Survey on Fishing Cats

Between February 2009 until now we have captured and radio collared 17 fishing cats—10 males and 7 females. However, during the last several months we have been frantically working to reduce the killing and mysteriously disappearing of fishing cats in this landscape, those include nine out of 17 of our collared cats. Included in the list of missing cats are Calvin, Namtaan, Tung, Chogun and Sodsai—the latest male we captured and radio collared. The ones that we found carcasses of are, Oliang, Pukluk, Saifa and Pepsi.Those who were killed, retribution and direct poaching appear to remain the biggest threats to fishing cats in this area.

For those who disappeared and we hope that they are still around and it's just the collar malfunction. So, my focus at the moment has been finding out what is the main cause of the dissappearance of these cats.

We still hope that those dissapeared cats will come back to us. One incident and has prompted us to keep our hopes up is—Cocoa, one of the collared fishing cats that we thought had been poached or died of some cause had shown up on one of our camera traps (after dissappeaing for almost a year!!!). It turned out that his old model collar had malfunctioned. He had a cut around his neck that may happen from a scratch. So, we captured him back last April, took his collar off and treated his cut. Cocoa gained two more kilograms since he was first captured (May 2009). We did not affix another collar due to the cut on his neck. He also lost his ear tag so we attached a new one. Cocoa was in good shape and showed no other health issues otherwise. We released him back at where he was recaptured. Cocoa reappeared again this early July. Thanks to K. and Donna Baylis for providing this magnificent photo of Cocoa.

Outreach and Conservation Activity

Due to a shocking number of collared fishing cats that have been dissapearing or killed, I had brought this to the attention of the Prachaub Khiri Khan Governor. We met in mid February to discuss these concerns. The governor took the issue very seriously and called for a meeting with all the community leaders to discuss the issues. Now, the fishing cat has been made into part of the provincial natural resources protection policy and a lot of action has been made since mid February.

We went and met with people in seven villages in three districts around our study site with the District Chief to talk about fishing cats and presented the issues. The District Chief helped present the project and asked people in the community to help protect fishing cats.

As for the Department of National Park and Plant Conservation action, The Director of the Wildlife Conservation Division-Chatchawan Pitdamkham, sent his staff from the Communications Office to help with the outreach work. They will help produce a lot of posters, leaflets and billboards to distribute and display in the community.

We also try to spread our words on the importance of fishing cat conservation on several local newspapers—English newspapers--The Nation and Bangkok Post and several Thai language newspapers. We also participated in a district's famous temple event. This event showed off Kui people in traditional clothes. Some picture, mascots and paper-mached of rear wildlife species such as tiger, gaur, tapir...and of course fishing cat were part of this event.

Fishing cat stories featured in local newspapers

Preparing fishing cat Participating in the parade

paper mache for the parade

I am also very delighted to inform you that we have now officially set up the district's "Fishing Cat Conservation Campaign Committee" with the District Chief as a Chairman. The committee consists of 13 community leaders, 7 school directors. Advisors are 7 abbots from local temples. Our next step is to establish the Provincial Fishing Cat Campaign Committee" with the Governor as a Chairman.