Wild cats are graceful, charismatic and shy non-human species that are facing global extinction crisis across the hemispheres. Ironically, its shyness, its gracefulnesses and charismatic outlook are the intrinsic beauties that drive the species into its brink of extinction. Globally, there are 38 species of wild cats, scattered across tropical, neotropical, semi-tropical and non tropical habitats across the continents except Antarctica. Broadly speaking, cats can be categorized into three distinct but related groups. These are small-size cats, medium-size cats and of course our beloved and famous big cats. For majority of us, big cats captivate our attention as we are more used to see them either in nature programs, movies, television ads and in zoos. But how many of us actually realize that big cats comprise less than 15% of the total number of cats that represents the cat family called Felidae.

Majority of the beautifully enlightening and cryptic cats are in fact medium to small size category and often are living in small population-size in tropical countries. By small size, what I meant is habitat degradation and population insularization leading to small population size. Cats in general require contiguous and large intact habitats, often habitats must need to maintain the ecological integrity in the form of mosaic of heterogeneity where fresh reed beds, wet tall grasslands, tropical hardwood trees, and dense undergrowth of forest layers and shrubs are neatly created a suitable healthy ecosystem for cats to safely live and breed.

Unfortunately, wild cat ecosystems are increasingly under pressure due to various anthropogenic causes notably habitat encroachment by humans, habitat conversion for agriculture and pasture land, mineral exploration, logging for timber and other forest products and many more. Therefore, in order to conserve elusive and equally charismatic wild cat species, maintaining healthy ecological habitats is at paramount importance.