Research overview: fishing cats across human-dominated landscapes range-wide

Beyond Colombo, fishing cats occupy a mosaic of paddy fields, aquaculture, mangroves and peri-urban wetlands from South to Southeast Asia, persisting in human-dominated landscapes wherever wetlands remain. This overview synthesises camera-trap and occupancy research across this range, comparing how agricultural wetlands, fish farms and urban marshes support or threaten the species, and the regional variation in conflict, road mortality and habitat loss. It examines the conservation status of a felid heavily dependent on contested wetland habitat and the transboundary nature of its threats. The synthesis situates the famous Colombo population within the broader picture of fishing cats in working wetlands.