Uпⱱeіɩіпɡ tһe Eпіɡmа: Տаⱱіпɡ а Tһгeаteпed Ϲаt wіtһ а Ɗeсeрtіⱱeɩу Տіmрɩe Ƥɩап

Across the tropical forests of sub-Saharan Africa slinks a seldom seen wild cat with a squat, muscular body, and fur that comes in a variety of colors, such as orange, gray, black, and spotted.

The African golden cat is the least known feline on the entire continent, with some wildlife rangers never laying eyes on a single animal within their three-decade careers. That’s what most intrigued conservationist Badru Mugerwa when he began studying the 30-pound species in 2010.

“My passion stems from the fact almost nothing is known about this species,” says Mugerwa, founder and director of the conservation nonprofit, Embaka, the name after for the African golden cat species in Rukiga, a language of western Uganda. “It’s my purpose to gather this information and share it with the rest of the world.”

That’s especially crucial as both West and East African subspecies of this shy feline are dwindling, due to both widespread deforestation and getting caught in illegal snares intended for bushmeat. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the species as near-threatened across its range of 21 countries, from Senegal to Kenya.

In 2012 and 2013, Mugerwa set up a major camera trap network in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, which showed the solitary cats tend to stick to the national park and rarely, if ever, venture into communities to prey on livestock. The species mostly eats small mammals, ambushing them. That data also revealed each 16 square kilometers of national park is home to one golden cat, which is a relatively stable number, he says. (Read about the small cats you’ve never heard of.)

But after observing snares throughout the park’s forests for a year, Mugerwa made a sobering discovery: Eighty-one cats had died in the illegal traps set for antelope and other game, their bodies left to rot.

“This was very emotional to me—this finding really changed the way I look at conservation,” Mugerwa says. And that’s how he launched a new plan to save the golden cat.

Pigs as protein

When Mugerwa interviewed local Ugandans throughout the golden cat’s range, they generally had a positive view of the African golden cat, but their main concerns centered around income and protein. So, in 2020 Mugerwa and colleagues launched the Piglets for Bushmeat program, which provides domestic pigs as an alternative to illegal hunting.

Pig seeding, as it’s called, works like this: Embaka provides a pregnant pig to a family on the condition that when the pig gives birth, the family will donate some piglets to its neighbors and pledge not to set snares for bushmeat. From there, a whole community can raise—and eat—pigs as their main source of protein. Since 2020, the organization has donated 53 animals, which have now doubled to 102 animals across 62 families, according to Mugerwa.

“The idea is the benefits of conservation will reach everyone in the community,” Mugerwa says. In 2021 and 2022, his organization also provided free mobile dental clinics to nearly 500 people near Bwindi as an incentive for people to support wildlife conservation.

Because African golden cats are generally well liked, Mugerwa has also recruited more than 1,700 people to join village-based anti-poaching groups. Since the pig-seeding project was launched, none of the participating families have been caught poaching, either by law enforcement or community watch groups, Mugerwa says—evidence that the program is working.

Supplying people with animals to deter them from poaching has succeeded in other situations, says Jim Sanderson, program manager for small-cat conservation at Re:wild and a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group. For instance, in 2022, the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund launched a program that provides people with goats in South Sudan’s Bire Kpatuos Game Reserve, part of the African golden cat’s range. That project has already led to a reduction in bushmeat hunting.

“They stop poaching, and when they stop poaching their lives improve. It helps all wildlife,” Sanderson says.

“Gray ghost”

Laila Bahaa-el-din is one of the few conservation biologists to have seen an African golden cat alive.

Driving along an old logging road in Gabon one morning in 2012, she saw a cat-shaped animal. “I lifted my camera and zoomed in, sure enough it was a golden cat. I just started shaking—it was an intense moment,” says Bahaa-el-din, now a conservation consultant and camera trap specialist for the Swiss company Intellitraps.com.

Just a few years years prior, when she made plans to study the African golden cat for her Ph.D. research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, “people thought I was crazy,” she says. “It was almost mythological, a gray ghost.”

Determined, she set up camera traps in several different areas of central Gabon, including a pristine site with no exploitation, a continuous forest that had been previously explored, a forest-savannah mosaic with a history of logging, two logging concessions, and a village hunting area. Unsurprisingly, the highest density of cats occurred at the pristine site at no logging, at the encouraging rate of 16 animals per hundred square kilometers. Also to be expected, Bahaa-el-din caught the fewest cats on camera in the hunting areas, where illegal snares are common. (See Nat Geo’s photos of small cats from around the world.)

In Gabon, there are strict laws about logging, such as not clearcutting whole forests, which is likely why Bahaa-el-din also recorded several cats in the logging areas. “It’s an interesting revelation,” she says. “If you put pressure on logging companies to do things right, they can still get the economic gain while still maintaining some biodiversity.”

That evidence that the cats can survive in logging areas and other disturbed land gives her “a lot of hope, which I felt an absence of before my research,” Bahaa-el-din says.

“As long as governments put in place rules about snares, golden cats stand a really good chance.”