Pallas Cat

Threats and Conservation

Tellingly, a lot of the information about this cat’s status in the wild comes form fur traders! It is bizarre in some ways but totally to be expected. For example there are probably more pallas cats in the wild than Chinese desert cats because there are more furs of the former in markets than the latter. I find this disheartening. The Chinese desert cat (or Chinese mountain cat) is rare, very rare, however. Bearing in mind its shrinking range the pallas cat is assessed as near threatened (NR):

However, the full list of threats to survival in the wild are (src: Red List):

• reduced prey population. This is caused by people poisoning the cat and over hunting of its prey. The poisoning is not directed at the pallas cat but animals that are thought to carry and transmit bubonic plague (central China) and to protect grazing land (west and north China).
• degraded habitat due to livestock and agriculture.
• degraded/destroyed habitat due to mining (Russia and Central Asia).
• fragmented range
• hunted for the fur (in Mongolia it is still legal to hunt this cat under conditions, which are not enforced. This is a scam, I allege).
• fur exported from Mongolia to China (gloves?)
• incidentally trapped and shot
• killed for medicinal purposes (the usual reasons then!)
• killed by domestic dogs

Conservation includes:

• Listing under CITES Appendix II (prevention of trade in body parts but is it enforced?).
• Hunting is banned except in Mongolia (a major part of the cat’s range is in Mongolia). Bizarrely it is considered Near Threatened in Mongolia but that status has not encouraged the authorities there to protect this cat. Although, 12% of the range in Mongolia is “protected”. However, the areas are unprotected. Clearly the government has no regard for this species of animal.
• There are a considerable number of reserves, parks or protected areas in Russian and China but I often wonder what these actually mean. On occasion there would seem to be little difference between reserves and non-protected areas. Are they a misrepresentation of what is actually going on?
• 6% of the pallas’s cat’s range is protected in Russia (one can’t call that generous).
• I would like to mention a conservation group: http://savemanul.org/eng. This is a Pallas Cat Study and Conservation Program. It would seem to be run by Siberian Environmental Center. A July 25th 2009 posting on the site talks about the tracking of a female manul and her kittens. They had taken up home under a hut but she moved home 0.6 miles away (a considerable distance with kittens) and found a burrow. The prey was plentiful (rodents – Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus)). These observations took place in The Daursky State Biosphere Reserve (Zapovednik) – see photo below. Conservation seems largely to do with study as many wildcat species are still little understood.

The Daursky State Biosphere Reserve (Zapovednik) – photographer unknown – a part of the range of the manul wild cat (Pallas’s cat)