🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This study documented a devastating outbreak of canine distemper virus that killed a large fraction of the lions in the Serengeti ecosystem, demonstrating that infectious disease can cause sudden mass…

Roelke-Parker ME, Munson L, Packer C, et al. · Nature · 1996

This large-scale study evaluated whether protected areas around the world actually reduce human pressures by comparing changes in indicators such as cropland conversion and human footprint inside prot…

Geldmann J, Manica A, Burgess ND, Coad L, Balmford A · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2019

This study built a continental model of connectivity for the jaguar, mapping potential movement corridors linking jaguar populations from Mexico to Argentina. The authors used expert knowledge and lan…

Rabinowitz A, Zeller KA · Biological Conservation · 2010

This influential analysis argued that wild tigers persist at meaningful densities across only a small fraction of their range, with the great majority of remaining animals concentrated in a limited se…

Walston J, Robinson JG, Bennett EL, et al. · PLoS Biology · 2010

This analysis compared the performance and economics of fenced versus unfenced lion reserves across Africa. The authors found that fenced reserves maintained lion populations much closer to their pote…

Packer C, Loveridge A, Canney S, et al. · Ecology Letters · 2013

This influential study assessed whether tropical protected areas actually work by surveying parks across many countries and comparing conditions inside their boundaries with the surrounding landscape.…

Bruner AG, Gullison RE, Rice RE, da Fonseca GAB · Science · 2001

This methodological landmark established how camera traps combined with capture-recapture statistics could yield rigorous, repeatable estimates of tiger density. Because individual tigers carry unique…

Karanth KU, Nichols JD · Ecology · 1998

This landmark study revealed that cheetahs possess extraordinarily low genetic variation, so low that skin grafts exchanged between unrelated individuals were not rejected, indicating near-uniformity…

O'Brien SJ, Roelke ME, Marker L, et al. · Science · 1985

This continental assessment combined population data from across Africa to show that lion numbers have fallen sharply in most regions, with West, Central, and East African populations in steep decline…

Bauer H, Chapron G, Nowell K, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2015

This genetic study sampled tigers across their range to clarify how many distinct lineages exist and how they are distributed. By analyzing molecular markers, the authors described population structur…

Luo SJ, Kim JH, Johnson WE, et al. · PLoS Biology · 2004

This study quantified how much range the world's large carnivores have lost by comparing historical and current distributions across many species, including big cats. The authors found that large carn…

Wolf C, Ripple WJ · Royal Society Open Science · 2017

This study documented that large carnivores, including the Eurasian lynx, have recovered and persist across much of Europe not in remote wilderness but in landscapes densely settled and used by people…

Chapron G, Kaczensky P, Linnell JDC, et al. · Science · 2014

Global biodiversity policy has coalesced around targets to protect or conserve thirty percent of land and sea by 2030, widely known as 30x30. This overview surveys research on what such area-based tar…

Having passed through an extreme bottleneck, the Amur leopard carries very low genetic diversity and shows signs of inbreeding, raising concerns about long-term viability even as numbers recover. This…

Amur leopards rely chiefly on roe deer, sika deer, and other ungulates whose abundance, depressed by poaching and habitat degradation, limits leopard recovery in the cold forests of the Russian Far Ea…

The Amur tiger of the Russian Far East and northeast China recovered from near-extinction in the mid-twentieth century to a stable population spread across vast temperate forests. This overview survey…

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES, governs cross-border trade in wildlife, and the world's big cats are listed on its Appendix I, banning commercial international trad…

By the early 2000s the Iberian lynx survived in just two isolated populations, in Doñana and the eastern Sierra Morena of southern Spain, each small, fragmented, and at acute risk of extinction. This…

The Iberian lynx recovery was sustained by a series of large, multi-year conservation projects supported substantially by the European Union's LIFE program, which financed breeding, reintroduction, ha…

The Eurasian lynx was exterminated from much of central and western Europe and has since been reintroduced to several regions, including the Alps, the Jura, and parts of central Europe. This overview…

The Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program, GSLEP, is an intergovernmental initiative uniting the twelve snow leopard range countries around a shared conservation agenda, including a goa…

Having passed through a severe bottleneck, the Iberian lynx carries low genetic diversity and signs of inbreeding, especially in the historically isolated Doñana population. This overview surveys cons…

The Iberian lynx depends on Mediterranean scrubland and woodland mosaics that support dense rabbit populations and provide cover for hunting and denning. This overview surveys research on lynx habitat…

Reintroduction and translocation were central to expanding the Iberian lynx from two relict populations to a network of populations across Spain and Portugal. This overview surveys research on how rel…

This overview examines the science and management history of India's Project Tiger, launched in 1973, and the expanding network of tiger reserves it created. Researchers have studied how core-buffer z…

Key Biodiversity Areas are sites identified as significant for the global persistence of biodiversity, and they offer a framework for prioritizing places critical to big cats. This overview surveys re…

Namibia's communal conservancy program, which devolves rights to manage and benefit from wildlife to local communities, is among the most studied community-based conservation models and is credited wi…

The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool, known as SMART, is widely deployed in tiger reserves to make ranger patrols data-driven. This overview surveys research evaluating how recording patrol route…

The mangrove forests of the Sundarbans, shared by India and Bangladesh, support a unique tiger population adapted to a tidal, saline, swimming-intensive environment. This overview surveys research on…

Big cats are often used as umbrella species, whose large area requirements mean that protecting them also protects many co-occurring species, and as flagship species, whose charisma mobilizes public s…