Early one morning in the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh, forest officials rushed to a village after receiving a familiar distress call. A “leopard cub” had reportedly been trapped inside a cage placed near agricultural fields. Such alerts are common in this landscape, where large carnivores often move through sugarcane farms and villages. But when officials arrived, they discovered the animal inside the cage was not a leopard cub at all. It was a fishing cat.
Surrounded by frightened villagers, the small wild cat had been force-fed pieces of sugarcane by people who believed they were dealing with a dangerous predator. The animal’s spotted coat and proximity to homes had fuelled panic. Forest staff intervened, rescued the fishing cat and released it into a nearby forest patch. The incident was far from unique. Across the Terai, fishing cats are repeatedly trapped, rescued or killed after being mistaken for young leopards.
These encounters reveal a deeper conservation problem. Fishing cats, despite being legally protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, largely remain outside India’s conservation focus. Unlike many iconic species, they do not rely solely on protected forests. Instead, they survive in human-dominated landscapes that conservation planning has long overlooked.
The fishing cat is uniquely adapted to life around water. With a robust body, powerful limbs and partially webbed feet, it is one of the few wild cats that actively hunts fish. Rivers, canals, marshes, paddy fields and village wetlands form the core of its habitat. While breeding populations exist inside tiger reserves such as Dudhwa, Valmiki and Pilibhit, these protected areas represent only a small fraction of the species’ functional landscape.
Much of the fishing cat’s range lies outside reserve boundaries, embedded within agricultural fields, irrigation canals and floodplains. These scattered wetlands act as foraging grounds and movement corridors, allowing the species to persist across fragmented terrain. However, as wetlands are drained, encroached upon or converted for agriculture and infrastructure, the fishing cat loses not just habitat but the ecological connectivity essential for its survival.
Because fishing cats are nocturnal and elusive, their presence often comes to light only during accidents or emergencies. They appear in news reports as roadkill victims, animals rescued from wells, or wild cats cornered inside villages. Viewed individually, such incidents appear random. Taken together, they reveal a consistent pattern of persistence in landscapes that formal wildlife monitoring rarely reaches.
To understand this pattern, researchers analysed a decade of newspaper reports from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar published between 2015 and 2024. Verified through photographs or Forest Department confirmation, the data showed fishing cat occurrences in 22 districts of Uttar Pradesh and five districts of Bihar, most of them far from protected forests. These were not isolated sightings but repeated records from the same regions, particularly along rivers, canals and wetland-rich agricultural belts.
Three landscapes emerged as particularly important. The Hastinapur–Bijnor belt, dominated by sugarcane cultivation and intersected by canals and rivers, recorded frequent encounters. The Dudhwa landscape showed fishing cats moving through villages along reserve boundaries. Further east, the Suhelwa–Sohagi Barwa region highlighted the importance of seasonal village wetlands, locally known as taals.
The circumstances under which fishing cats were detected reveal the risks they face daily. Over ten years, 25 fishing cats were reported dead outside protected areas, with road collisions accounting for most deaths. Winter fog and poor visibility on rural roads significantly increase the likelihood of such accidents. Misidentification poses an equally serious threat. Fishing cats are often mistaken for leopard cubs, leading to fear-driven captures and confinement despite the animal posing little danger.
Forest Department rescue records further highlight how frequently fishing cats encounter hazardous infrastructure. Animals are rescued from wells, orchards, agricultural fields and even cages meant for leopards. While rescues prevent immediate harm, they also underscore the vulnerability of fishing cats in landscapes not designed with wildlife in mind.
An even less visible concern involves cubs. Media reports frequently describe the rescue of unidentified “wild cat” cubs from farmlands, but species confirmation and post-rescue outcomes are rarely documented. This lack of information creates a conservation blind spot, raising questions about survival rates and long-term impacts of removing young animals from their natal habitats.
Together, these patterns reveal a species surviving at the margins of India’s conservation framework. Fishing cats are not confined to wilderness areas. They inhabit the shared spaces where agriculture, water management and human settlement intersect. Their continued presence reflects remarkable ecological adaptability, but adaptability alone cannot compensate for sustained habitat loss and unmanaged risk.
Unlike large carnivores that require vast forest tracts, fishing cats depend on small, scattered wetlands embedded within human landscapes. In such settings, fortress-style conservation offers little protection. The species’ survival depends instead on coexistence, tolerance and the retention of functional wetlands within working landscapes.
In many parts of the Terai, this coexistence already exists informally. Farmers and fishers often encounter fishing cats without conflict, guided by local norms that discourage harm. These unrecognised practices form an overlooked foundation for conservation, one that policy has yet to meaningfully support.
If this oversight continues, fishing cats risk a slow and silent decline. Not through deliberate persecution, but through shrinking wetlands, expanding roads and persistent misidentification. Safeguarding the species requires a fundamental shift in conservation thinking, one that recognises human-dominated wetlands as critical habitats deserving protection.
Fishing cats still move silently through canals and reed beds of the Terai. Whether they continue to do so depends on how seriously India values wetlands, not just as resources for people, but as living ecosystems that sustain both human livelihoods and wildlife.