Small Cats of Central Argentina

Little known, small cats often get minimal to no funding. This project is in need of more funding. The following proposal was written by Dr. Mauro Lucherini (click here to email him). He is also the researcher for our sponsored Andean Mountain Cat Project

The central Argentina natural ecosystems have been largely modified by human activities, especially farming and ranching. Wildcats are particularly vulnerable to the local extinction in altered/fragmented landscapes because of their relativity large ranges, low population numbers and direct persecution/hunting by humans. Because of that and of the scarcity of data on Argentina's wildcats, we decided to study of the predator community that we have detected in the Laguna Chasicó region, a unique guild formed by four cat species:
• Pampas cat, Oncifelis colocolo (Internationally listed as Vulnerable, this is one of the least known South American cats)
• Jaguarundi, Herpailurus yaguarondi (Near Threatened, but very rare in central Argentina, it has never studied in Argentina)
• Geoffroy's cat, O. geoffroyi (Near Threatened, it has been the focus of our team since 1998)
• Puma, Puma concolor (Near Threatened, but on the border of the ecological extinction in the region)





We aim to understand how these wildcats separate their niches, as well as how the habitat alterations caused by human activities may affect cat behavior and assemblage structure. We also plan to use the data to contribute to the understanding of the factors that influence the distribution of these cats globally and produce a GIS-based habitat suitability model to predict their occurrence in the entire region.

We started this project in July 2006 and we have already confirmed the presence of sympatric populations of Puma, Pampas cat and Geoffroy's cat by camera trapping and sign search. We have also live-trapped 11 Geoffroy's cats (8 males and 3 females, 4 of them young animals), and we are currently radiotracking six radiocollared adults.





We are planning education and outreach activities to increase awareness in local communities on the importance of this predator assemblage and suggest conservation-friendly uses of private land.



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