Hong Kong scientists excited to find rare leopard cats thriving in Kadoorie Farm reforested area
- Density of 0.87 leopard cats per sq km is second in the world only to that on island off Singapore
- Year-long survey using cameras found nine leopard cats, including two juveniles, in Kadoorie area
Hong Kong conservationists who were thrilled to discover a group of rare leopard cats in the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden have said their presence is testimony to decades of reforestation efforts there.
That made for a density of 0.87 cats per sq km, second in the world only to Singapore’s outlying island of Pulau Tekong, a restricted military area which recorded 0.89 individuals per sq km.
A year-long survey found nine cats, including two juveniles, in the 148-hectare conservation area next to Lam Kam Road, which connects Tai Po in the New Territories East and Yuen Long district in the west.
The density at Kadoorie Farm was higher than in similar studies in the central part of Taiwan, a Unesco biosphere reserve in Thailand, tiger sanctuaries in India and national parks in Malaysian Borneo.
“The result was beyond my expectations. I didn’t know there was such a number, considering how small the farm is,” said Yang Jianhuan, a senior conservation officer at the Kadoorie Conservation China Department.
The survey was the first one conducted in the area including Hong Kong and mainland China. Yang and his team used 19 camera traps to study the farm’s biodiversity from June 2020 to May 2021.
They captured 113 pictures of leopard cats, and concluded after analyses that at least three were residents of the farm’s restored forests. The rest were likely to be living in areas around the farm.
The cameras also captured eight other terrestrial animal species, including mongooses, porcupines and civet cats.
The leopard cat is the only feline species native to Hong Kong surviving in the wild, following the extinction of tigers and leopards over the past century.
People are not allowed to keep leopard cats in Hong Kong, and face a penalty of up to HK$1 million (US$128,050) and seven years in jail if found possessing a cat without permission.
Despite a low risk of extinction, it is threatened by habitat loss and poaching.
It is considered critically endangered in Japan and Singapore and protected in the mainland and Afghanistan. The international trade of leopard cats found in Bangladesh, India and Thailand is banned.
The findings by Kadoorie Farm were published last November in the Biodiversity Science journal, funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Environmental group World Wide Fund for Nature Hong Kong said leopard cats were also seen in the Mai Po nature reserve, in Hong Kong’s northwest.
“Our understanding of leopard cats remains meagre,” said Carmen Or, the group’s wetland research manager. “We should do more research outside Kadoorie Farm so we can strategise to protect the cats and their environment.”
Kadoorie’s Yang said the leopard cats thrived in the farm area thanks to more than 60 years of reforestation, providing them plentiful food and hideouts.
“When we give Mother Nature some time, she can recover robustly,” he said.
Since the 1950s, Kadoorie Farm has sown more than 120 plant species in the once-bald foothills of Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong’s highest peak, turning it from devastated scrublands into an experimental forest.
Yang said the restored habitat attracted small animals, including mice and sparrows, which the leopard cats could prey on. The farm also did not have predators such as pythons and raptors that hunt the cats, he added.
Kadoorie Farm currently houses two leopard cats. Manis, now nine years old, was a donation from the Singapore Zoo in 2015. Lula, seven, was rescued in 2016 but found unfit to be released back into the wild.
Three injured leopard cats sent to the farm last year did not survive. Two rescued by the farm in 2020 were released.
Yang said he hoped the study could provide insights into other regional biodiversity studies so that authorities could increase their conservation efforts.
“Research in southern China and in the New Territories North has been far from sufficient for animals such as leopard cats and pangolins,” he said.
