Research overview: water resources and riparian corridors for urban felids

Water sources and riparian corridors are disproportionately important to felids in human-dominated landscapes, providing drinking water, prey, cover and movement routes through otherwise hostile developed terrain. This overview synthesises research on how cats from pumas to caracals and fishing cats concentrate activity along streams, washes, canals and wetland edges, and how these linear features function as critical connectivity in fragmented cities. It examines the vulnerability of riparian habitat to development, channelisation and pollution, and the conservation priority of protecting and restoring waterways as felid lifelines. The synthesis frames water-associated habitat as a keystone element of felid persistence in arid and developed landscapes alike.