The Formosan clouded leopard, a subspecies of this beautiful feline carnivore endemic to Taiwan, should now be considered extinct, according to a team of zoologists from Taiwan and the United States. The team tried to find the elusive animal for 13 years. This quest started in 2000 with the work of zoologist Chiang Po-jen for his dissertation on the subspecies (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University).
During 2000 – 2004 when Chiang and his team studied the population status of the Formosan clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa brachyurus) and the ecology of its prey in Southern Taiwan, not a single clouded leopard had been found. No clouded leopards were photographed in a total of 13,354 camera trap days, and the hair snares stations that were set up, did not trap any clouded leopard hairs either.
The work continued after Chiang finalised his dissertation entitled ‘Ecology and conservation of Formosan clouded leopard, its prey, and other sympatric carnivores in southern Taiwan’, which he defended on 14 November 2007. But no evidence has been found to suggest that the endemic clouded leopard still exist.
Last week, several media reported about the dissapointing results of the study and Chiang Po-jen told media reporters Monday:
So, either there are no specimens of this subspecies of clouded leopard left at all in the forests of Taiwan, or there will be no viable population size for this subspecies to survive.
The extinction of the clouded leopards in Taiwan’s primary forests is most likely due to prey depletion and habitat destruction, plus historical pelt trade. These major causes are all manmade — hunting and development.
The absence of the leopards came as no surprise. Already in 1988 researcher Alan Rabinowitz, now CEO of the big-cat conservation organisation Panthera, had a paper published in Oryx — The international Journal of Conservation, in which he described the negative outcome of his search for the clouded leopard in Taiwan. The last sighting of the subspecies was reported in 1983 according to Rabinowitz.
It appears that the only Formosan clouded leopard left in Taiwan is the stuffed specimen at National Taiwan Museum as the two live clouded leopards at Taipei Zoo are imported species from Southeast Asia.
The research findings have been submitted to the journal Oryx and are expected to be published in the next six months. After the report is published the Taiwan Council of Agriculture’s Wildlife Conservation Advisory Committee will seek to verify the information and will decide whether the Formosan clouded leopard should be taken off the government’s list of protected animals in Taiwan, according Kuan Li-hao, a division chief at the COA Forestry Bureau.
When the Formosan clouded leopard will be declared officially extinct, there still will exist two other subspecies in the wild. The clouded leopard has recently (2006) been divided into two species based on DNA analysis. Those two species can also be divided geographically into mainland cats, Neofelis nebulosa, and island cats, Neofelis diardi. In addition based on genetic analysis these island cats can be split into two subspecies — found in Sumatra and Borneo respectively. Unfortunately these two remaining subspecies are considered Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ with a decreasing population trend.
(Source: Focus Taiwan, 30.04.2013; Motherboard, 02.05.2013; Scientific American, 03.05.2013; Panthera, 03.05.2013; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™)