Focus on the oncilla Leopardus tigrinus in Brazil

 

The oncilla, closely resembles its South American spotted cousins, the ocelot and margay, and is classified as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List. Recent projects in Brazil are collecting new records to help clarify this species status and distribution in its largest range state. Tadeu Gomes de Oliveira, senior author of the Guia de identificação dos felinos brasileiros, has collected the first records of this species from the Amazon. The photo above is of an oncilla from a disturbed area of habitat near Santa Inês in eastern Amazonia.

This nighttime camera trap photo was taken by Marcos Adriano Tortato, coordinator of the project Felids of the Serra do Tabuleiro State Park in the Atlantic coastal forest of southeastern Brazil. This is one of a number of important cat conservation projects currently in need of support. Projects are posted on CAT's Proposal Bulletin Board, a new service for the international network of cat specialists.

An all-black or melanistic oncilla (Leopardus tigrinus) is chased by a spotted one in the São Francisco de Paula National Forest in southeastern Brazil. Biologist Rosane Vera Marques and her husband Eletr. Eng. Fernando de Miranda Ramos are taking photos of this and other cat species with camera-traps of their own design called "olho-de-coruja" (owl's eye) in a federal protected area with Araucaria forest, an ecosystem associated with Atlantic Forest, that is included in UNESCO's Biosphere Reserve system. They started working in 1999 in association with Dr. Peter Crawshaw's puma project - see the CAT research library for his report and photos. Contact CAT for more information about how to support this group of cat specialists.

•Read the oncilla species account from the Cat Specialist Group's online Cat Action Plan to see the gap in species distribution filled by these new records.