A nurturing environment
Why do leopard cats choose to live so close to human habitations?
Because the grasslands, forests, and fields are full of the rodents, birds, and hares on which they prey, and the forests provide the cats with a protected environment in which to rear their young.
Many members of the Tongxiao Conservation Society have been in the business of growing economically important tree crops such as Formosan acacia and tung trees for years. The society itself is one of the few Miaoli groups actively engaged in agroforestry. With government conservation policies reducing lumber harvests, society members have been seeking to transition into other fields and have become involved with the Forestry Bureau’s “community forestry” program.
Yu Chien-hsun, a technician with the bureau’s Hsinchu Forest District Office, says that the bureau is gathering data for a leopard cat conservation zone in Miaoli. The society is in favor of the effort, but hopes it can be combined with community development.
On this afternoon, Chen is leading a group of conservation society members into Hsinchu’s No. 74 and 75 forest lands to conduct a survey. When they run into an animal trail, they begin boring into the forest and soon find a gray-white mass of leopard cat scat. Chen explains that leopard cats don’t bury their scat, instead using it and urine to mark their territories. She then reminds society members to bury whatever territorial markers they find after recording their location to avoid double counting.
Chen says that excrement serves multiple purposes for male leopard cats, who not only use it to mark territory, but also to attract females. She adds that leopard cats have quite large territories, with the males having home ranges of five to six square kilometers, and the females 1.5-1.8 km².
“If it weren’t for Chen’s research, we’d know almost nothing,” says Yu. He explains that development projects like the County Route 50 and Provincial Route 13 bypasses would have done great damage to the cats’ habitat if the environmental impact studies (EIS) hadn’t looked at Chen’s data. He mentions the Fulüshou Cemetery project in Houlong as another case in point. The Legislative Yuan and environmental groups have called for the EIS to be redone because the original didn’t examine the project’s impact on the leopard cats’ habitat. As a result, the project is still under negotiation.
The leopard cat’s relative secretiveness has made it difficult to study. Fortunately, it doesn’t bury its scat, giving scientists a place to start their research. (courtesy of the Endemic Species Research Institute) The lower photo shows indigestible bits of rodent fur and bones found in a leopard cat’s scat.