🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Individual protected areas are often too small to hold viable big cat populations on their own, making connectivity between reserves critical. This overview surveys research on how isolation affects c…

Protected areas are not permanent; governments sometimes weaken, shrink, or abolish them, a set of actions researchers call PADDD, for protected-area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement. This o…

Protected areas are governed in many ways, from strict state-run parks to community conservancies and indigenous-managed lands, and governance shapes both conservation outcomes and social justice. Thi…

The effectiveness of protected areas for big cats rests heavily on rangers, yet many reserves are chronically understaffed and underfunded. This overview surveys research quantifying the resources nee…

Rangers are not only enforcers but also data collectors, and ranger-based monitoring uses their patrols to gather information on wildlife, threats, and law-enforcement effort. This overview surveys re…

Conservation funding is limited, prompting research into how to maximize the return on investment, achieving the greatest conservation benefit per dollar spent on big cats and other carnivores. This o…

Restoring large carnivores can reshape entire ecosystems through trophic cascades, in which predators influence prey behavior and numbers, which in turn affects vegetation and other species. This over…

Roads fragment habitat, kill animals, and act as barriers to movement, making road ecology an important field for carnivore conservation. This overview surveys research on how roads affect big cats an…

Wire snares are among the most pervasive and indiscriminate threats to big cats, killing or maiming tigers, leopards, lions, and other predators directly and decimating the prey populations they depen…

Reintroducing big cats is as much a social undertaking as a biological one, since restored predators can prey on livestock and provoke fear, and local opposition can doom a project regardless of its e…

How animals are released strongly affects reintroduction success, and conservationists distinguish soft release, in which animals are held in on-site enclosures and supported after release, from hard…

Reintroducing large carnivores is difficult and often fails, prompting research into what distinguishes successful efforts. This overview surveys studies and the IUCN guidelines that synthesize lesson…

Systematic conservation planning provides a structured, transparent approach to deciding where to focus conservation, using explicit goals and software tools such as Marxan to design efficient network…

A growing array of technologies, including drones, thermal cameras, acoustic sensors, and networked alarm systems, has been deployed to detect and deter poaching of big cats and their prey. This overv…

The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool, SMART, has become a global standard for making ranger patrols data-driven across big cat reserves. This overview surveys research on how SMART records patrol…

Understanding why people poach, and what deters them, is essential to designing effective anti-poaching strategy. This overview surveys research on the economics and behavior of poaching, examining th…

Wildlife tourism, much of it built around charismatic big cats, generates revenue that can fund conservation and provide community benefits, but the distribution of those benefits strongly affects con…

Demand for big cat parts in traditional medicine, particularly bones believed to treat ailments, is a primary driver of poaching and trade affecting tigers, leopards, lions, and others. This overview…

Many large carnivore landscapes span international borders, prompting the creation of transboundary protected areas, sometimes called peace parks, that link reserves across countries into larger conse…

This sweeping review synthesized the global status of the world's largest carnivores, including big cats such as tigers, lions, and leopards, and documented that most are declining and have lost large…

Ripple WJ, Estes JA, Beschta RL, et al. · Science · 2014

This comprehensive edited volume brought together leading researchers to synthesize the science of wild cats, spanning felid evolution, behavior, ecology, and the full breadth of conservation challeng…

Macdonald DW, Loveridge AJ (eds) · 2010