A team of the local Idu Mishmi people led by Dr Sahil Nijhawan from ZSL and UCL, placed cameras in the jungles of Dibang Valley, Arunachal Pradesh to understand the distribution of medium and large-sized mammals. Among the images, they found many pictures of differently coloured, medium sized cats—all of which were Asiatic golden cats. The study also marks the first discovery of the tightly-rosetted morph of the golden cats in the world.
A new open-source satellite tool has revealed the critical ecological and economic importance of India’s Open Natural Ecosystems, challenging the colonial-era classification of these biodiversity hotspots as unproductive wastelands.
Bengaluru/