Wild Places Need Wild Cats

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Wild Places Need Wild Cats

Wild cats live in an extraordinary range of wild places. Tigers move through tropical forests, grasslands and wetlands. Jaguars inhabit forests and floodplains of the Americas, while snow leopards survive in the high mountains of Central and South Asia. Smaller wild cats occupy habitats ranging from deserts and savannas to forests and marshes. The IUCN Cat Specialist Group recognizes 40 living wild cat species, each adapted to its own ecological environment.

Wild cats are also part of the ecological communities that make these places function. As predators, they interact with prey and, in some ecosystems, with other predators. Large predators can influence the abundance and behavior of prey and smaller predators, producing effects that extend through food webs. This is one reason the disappearance of predators can change more than the population of a single species. It can alter relationships throughout an ecosystem.

But wild cats need more than isolated patches of land. They need suitable habitat, adequate prey and, for many species, connected landscapes that allow them to move, find mates and establish territories. Habitat loss and fragmentation have long been major concerns in wild cat conservation, along with conflict with people, declining prey and illegal killing.

There is also evidence that protecting and restoring habitat can make a difference. The Iberian lynx provides a remarkable example. Its population fell to only 62 mature individuals in 2001, but sustained conservation efforts, including restoring Mediterranean scrub and forest habitat, increasing rabbit prey, reintroducing lynx and reducing human-caused deaths, helped its population recover. By 2022 there were 648 mature individuals, and the total population was estimated at more than 2,000. In 2024, the species improved from Endangered to Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

Wild Places Need Wild Cats is a campaign to raise awareness of this connection. Protecting wild cats is not simply about protecting individual animals. It is also about maintaining the habitats, prey populations and ecological relationships that allow wild cats, and the many other species that share their landscapes, to survive.

Share the facts. Wild places need wild cats.