The ocelot of Beijing's Haituo Mountain.
Peking University, Cat Alliance/Courtesy photo
"Chinese Big Cat"
Lü Zhi, editor-in-chief
CITIC Publishing Group
□ Qin Mengting, a reporter for the Yangtze River Daily
Not long ago, it was the 12th "World Tiger Day", and the tiger, as a "big cat", is the most interesting one in the "cat family". In fact, there are also "net red kittens" such as rabbits and lynxes that have become popular because of their appearance, as well as little-known cloud cats and jungle cats.
The China Feline Conservation Alliance, the Shanshui Nature Conservation Center, and Wilderness Xinjiang (Xinjiang Environmental Protection Public Welfare Platform) jointly created a book "China Big Cat", which specializes in introducing 13 species of wild cats in China. They equipped each "cat" with scientific illustrations, infrared camera photos, videos, photographic works, maps and other picture materials, sharing ultra-complete images from discovery, research to protection, telling the story of the encounter between people and "cats".
■ Clarify the "confused account" of the distribution of cat species in China
At the end of 2021, Song Dazhao, head of the "Leopard Project" of the China Feline Protection Alliance, received an invitation from the editor of China National Geographic Books, saying that 2022 is the Year of the Tiger, and let's publish a popular science book about Chinese felines.
He was a little hesitant. Song Dazhao had previously translated "The World's Wild Cats", and he felt that the content of that book was difficult to surpass; Although there are many cats in China, there are too few local studies. Seeing that Lü Zhi, a professor of conservation biology at Peking University, and his founded Shanshui Nature Conservation Center and Wilderness Xinjiang were involved, he also joined in.
When I really started doing it, I found it not easy. What content can be presented to be worthy of the four words "Chinese cats"? Too deep content for people to read; General, outdated knowledge, without readability.
Since it is about "Chinese cats", it should be put on a solid knowledge of China's native cats. What's more, there are 38 to 41 species of wild cats in the world, and China has 13 of them, which is one of the countries with the largest number of cat species in the world.
However, they looked through the existing atlases and literature, and the information about the distribution and number of cats in China was relatively old. Even a check on the IUCN website is a "muddle" in the distribution of cat species in China. Over the years, with the unremitting efforts of many domestic scientific research units, forestry units and non-governmental organizations, the distribution and population status of many species have become clearer and clearer. Many of the fallacies of the past have been proven, and new distribution records have emerged.
They sorted it out and updated the distribution of China. For example, last year' news of the discovery of leopards in Luolong, Tibet, there were more places to determine that there were leopards; For example, the desert cat, there are many unverifiable records in history, saying that the distribution of this cat appeared in Xinjiang, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and other provinces and regions. Now a growing number of video surveys show that this is a cat living on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. They collected verifiable distribution data from recent years and assessed the distribution of this species. On this basis, they revised the distribution map of desert cats in China, which will be more accurate than the previous distribution records.
In Yunnan, the clouded leopard is called the "grass leopard"; From Guangdong to Yunnan, the golden cat is pronounced "bīu" in the local vernacular, which may be the origin of the name "Biao". There are also Bengal tigers in Tibet and marmots in The source of the Three Rivers in Qinghai that occupy the proportion of snow leopard food... Everyone has collected the content accumulated over the years of research and accumulation that belongs to China's wild cats into this "note" - "Chinese Big Cats". The writing team believes that only understanding is the beginning of protection.
■ The tiger is at the top of the food chain, and protecting it is conducive to protecting the entire ecological environment
The image of the "tiger" has been carved into the cultures of Asian countries, whether fierce, brave, cunning, or sacred. From the snow-capped forests of northeastern Asia, to the hot wetlands and high grasses of the South Asian subcontinent, to the 4,000-meter-high mountains of the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and even the humid and sweltering rainforests of Sumatra, this huge, elegant big cat is active.
Today, however, 3 of the 9 subspecies of tigers are extinct, and 4 of the remaining 6 are endangered, and only the Bengal and Siberian tigers are barely out of extinction (still under protection). At present, there are only tigers in China, only the Northeast Tiger and the Bengal Tiger in Metuo.
Why are tigers so important to ecology? Because the tiger is the top carnivore on land in Asia, it represents the integrity and health of the forest ecosystem. Tigers need a large number of prey and large areas of habitat for survival, and the protection of tigers means the comprehensive protection of the ecological environment.
For a long time, tigers were regarded as "pest beasts" in China, and "fighting tigers" was a heroic act to eliminate harm for the people, coupled with the economic value of tiger bones and tiger skins, there were many large-scale hunting of tigers. To make matters worse, tiger habitats in China are mostly located east of the Hu Huan Yong Line, an area suitable for agricultural development, and the rapid population growth has changed the type of land use here, resulting in a widespread loss of tiger habitat. When encountering humans, the "King of the Hundred Beasts" could only retreat.
Lü Zhi, a professor of conservation biology at Peking University, said that in 2000, he and his students trekked into Tibet to investigate Metuo, hoping to find traces of Bengal tigers. Previously, there had been tigers preying on the horses that villagers had kept in the forest, and the forestry department had specially approved local villagers to hunt the tiger, and when they arrived, they found that the township cadre Dawa had the tiger's canine teeth hanging around his neck — the hunt was done by the villagers.
After communicating with Dawa and investigating for more than 10 days, the old hunter promised at the villagers' meeting that he would not go up the mountain to hunt again, because he realized that the decline in the number of antelope, the tiger eating horses and the tiger's wild prey, antelope: "In the past, when I went up the mountain to hunt, I could encounter antelope in a day or two, but now it takes 7 days. "If there are more antelopes, there will be fewer cases of tigers eating livestock."
Unfortunately, during that investigation, Lü Zhi could not see the tiger's tracks. For more than 10 years, despite sporadic reports of tiger traces, no one ever witnessed a tiger again. Until 2019, the infrared camera deployed by the Kunming Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences captured the figure of the tiger flashing twice.
Although there are still considerable mountain forests in many parts of China, the tiger's main prey, such as sika deer, sambar deer and other large deer, is very scarce, which means that the tiger has no hope of returning to the wild. Only by systematically and comprehensively restoring the ecological environment, restoring the composition of different levels of biomes, from plants to large herbivores, and strengthening the study and population restoration of tigers, will it be possible to "return to their homeland" in various parts of China in the future. Nature doesn't really need to be artificially crafted, and many times it just needs a little breathing space.
But there's already a lot of good news. For example, in April 2021, a Siberian tiger was captured in Heilongjiang, known as "Wandashan No. 1"; Within a month, it was released again. Later, it was found that it had wandered from Heilongjiang to Jilin, preparing to establish its own territory.
■ Casually "petting cats" has ecological risks
There are 13 species of wild cats in China, and the focus of public and scientific attention is on the big cats tiger and leopard, and it is easier to ignore small cats, such as ocelots, cloud cats and fishing cats, while the desert cat is considered to be one of the least understood and least informative cats.
People who like cats like to call cats "cats", in fact, from a scientific point of view, this makes some sense. From Siberian tigers weighing more than 300 kilograms to rusty spotted ocelots weighing just 1 kilogram, cats occupy the niches of top predators in a variety of terrestrial ecosystems. Without humans, it is not an exaggeration to call the Earth a "cat star."
The ocelot is a small cat, some can weigh up to 20 pounds, some may weigh less than two pounds, and the size is similar to that of a domestic cat, or even slightly smaller. In the BBC documentary "Big Cat", a rusty spotted leopard cat once "cute" the audience, and a group of cat lovers cried out: "Where is it?" I want to raise! ”
This is actually a sad thing. The cute appearance of small cats is attractive, and the first reaction of people to express their love is to raise them and "pick them up", which has led to a large number of wild cats being captured, bred and sold as pets, which makes wild populations a huge threat.
What you may not know is that the "ocelot" is a very important signal: if a place has hunted the ocelot, then it will basically say goodbye to the tiger, leopard, wolf, golden cat, and yellow-throated mink; If there are still ocelots in a place, then even if there are no large carnivores, there are usually many prey favored by large carnivores such as iguanas, impala, black chamois, etc., then there is still hope of "taking the leopard home".
Why is the ocelot so "god"? Because it is the "small strong" in the feline, it has strong adaptability, is not picky, has strong reproductive ability, and can make it up. As long as humans leave it a little space, it can live. If even the ocelot can't survive, then other cats must not be able to survive. It is the "bottom line".
But the problem is that it is "ok", and people are not aware of the crisis. Before it was adjusted to a national second-level key protected animal in early 2021, for a long time, the protection level of ocelots was only "three haves" (beneficial or important economic and scientific research value), which means that people feel that it is similar to a sparrow, and no one thinks that the ocelot will go extinct.
In the city, ocelots will forage for food, patrol territory, and even live in culverts on roads, green belts under overpasses, and culverts. The researchers also found that in the places where ocelots love to move, the shooting rate of stray cats is relatively low; Where there are fewer ocelots, the density of stray cats is higher. This is a very interesting self-regulation mechanism between species in an ecosystem, and it proves that the role of the ocelot as a "bottom line" is much more than just indicating the biomass in the area.
Author: Qin Mengting
Source: Yangtze River Daily