WHY IS WILD CAT CONSERVATION IMPORTANT?
Healthy populations of wild cats are indicators of healthy and biologically diverse ecosystems.
Wild cats are fascinating and charismatic predators that stimulate interest in the natural world.
There are 38 species of wild cats worldwide. Almost all of them face serious threats, some to the point of extinction.
We can do something about it!
THE SCIENCE
The University of Arizona’s Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center (UA WCC) has been a resource for researchers, students, and citizen scientists. Our local studies on jaguar, ocelots, and puma are especially timely as these wild cats, "apex” carnivores, are inextricably linked to all other species in the environment. The UA WCC’s continued monitoring, inclusive of image, scat, and eDNA detections, is providing the data to do continued analyses on species spatial and temporal occurrence, abundance, and activity patterns.
