In 2018, Han Xue-song, then a researcher with the Beijing-based Shan Shui Conservation Center, was in the Sanjiangyuan region on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, surveying black-necked cranes (Grus nigricollis). At an elevation of more than 4000 meters (13,000 feet), this is a windswept land of alpine meadows and rolling hills that stretch as far as the eye can see.

On this particular day in mid-September, Han and his colleagues were taking a break by the side of the road when they spotted something on a distant hillside. The animal was difficult to make out, but looked like a red fox (Vulpes vulpes), which are fairly common in the area. Han took out his camera, snapped a couple of pictures with its powerful 400-millimeter lens, and didn’t think much more about it.

But later that evening, when Han downloaded the photos, he was in for a surprise. A strange cat — about twice the size of a domestic cat, with straw-colored fur, tufted ears, a white lower lip, and startling blue eyes — was staring back at him. Beside her was a small kitten. It was only after Han sent the photo to another biologist that he realized the significance of the find.

“Even at that time, when we had the picture in our hands, we didn’t know that’s a Chinese mountain cat,” Han says. “Most of us had never heard of that species.”

The Chinese mountain cat (Felis bieti) is China’s only endemic felid, and one of the least-known small cats in the world. Historically, most records came from skins or museum specimens of dubious origins. It wasn’t until 2004 that scientists figured out the cat has a very confined distribution along the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and it was another three years before biologists captured the first photographs in the wild. The species is classified as vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN Red List, but until very recently, almost nothing was known about its distribution, habitat use, or threats.

Once Han and the other researchers figured out it was a Chinese mountain cat, they  hurried back to the site, quickly found the old marmot burrow that served as the cats’ den, and, with as little disturbance as possible, set up camera traps. They found not one, but two kittens: a male and a female. Over the next five months, the remote cameras recorded videos and photos of the mother standing guard, feeding and playing with the kittens, and the young tumbling and basking in the sun. During this time, the family moved dens twice.

The researchers also found a number of other dens, though none were currently in use. Remarkably, one was within 120 m (400 ft) of a Tibetan herdsmen’s home, who told Han that the female cat had killed the resident marmots and then moved in.

This work, and other recent research, is finally filling in some of the gaps about the Chinese mountain cat’s distribution, habitat use and genetics. With change sweeping across the species’ home on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, that information is sorely needed.

Zeroing in on a Chinese mountain cat hotspot

In 2020, Liu Yan-lin, a professor at Qinghai Normal University, undertook the first comprehensive survey of Chinese mountain cats in and around the newly established Qilian Mountain National Park, a 50,200-square-kilometer (19,400-square-mile) protected area on the northern edge of the cat’s range.

He began by asking local people, including Tibetan herders, if they recognized the cat. Despite its English name, mountain cat, and Chinese name, Huang mo mao, which translates as “desert cat,” the species prefers shrub and grass habitat. “So local people call it the grass cat,” Liu says. “They know the species, and they led me to the place [where] they spotted it.”

Liu found that the Chinese mountain cat lived on the southern side of the Qilian range, and it appeared to be particularly abundant in Menyuan county, a high-elevation basin between the Qilian and Daban mountains. The county is a mix of small- and large-scale agriculture and tree plantations, as well as native shrubland and grassland. It’s inhabited by Han Chinese, pastoral Hui and ethnic Tibetans, and Liu says he was surprised that it appeared to be a stronghold for the cats.

“At the beginning, before I did the survey, my impression was that the cats live in remote areas, far away from people. But after the survey in the Qilian mountain [my impression] changed,” Liu says. “So, it’s actually living nearby people, even with the people.”

To figure out what was going on in Menyuan county, Kong Yue-qiao, a doctoral candidate at Peking University co-supervised by Liu, took on the first ecological study of the Chinese mountain cat in the wild.

Finding the cats was much easier than she imagined. On her first trip to the field, one sauntered onto the road in front of her car, a small rodent dangling from its mouth. The cats also proved remarkably easy to catch. Using baited box traps, it took Kong just 10 days to catch five cats in the spring of 2021; in the autumn things moved even faster. “It was far beyond our expectations,” Kong says.

In all, Kong captured seven females and three males, and fitted each with a GPS collar. Kong’s preliminary results show that the cats spend the most time in the plantations, which made up just a small percentage of the study area. These are areas dominated by sea buckthorn, a hardy, thorny shrub that grows to a height of 1-2 m (3-6 ft), planted by villagers under China’s “Green for Grain” program, which encourages farmers to convert marginal agricultural lands to forest.

Kong says it’s likely this habitat has ample cover, as well as food, for the cats. And because it’s near the villages, she says, the area is avoided by larger predators like wolves or snow leopards. The cats also use croplands, and the natural shrubby vegetation on the mountain slopes. Kong found the cats were active during the day, with a peak in the evening.

Liu says he isn’t sure why there appears to be such a high density of mountain cats in Menyuan county compared to other areas, but has some ideas.

“We are guessing the story is that this man-made landscape attracts a lot of Chinese mountain cats into the place around the county town,” Liu says. “So, they are living a dangerous, but highly rewarding life. A lot to eat, good places to hide — but also high risk.”

Menyuan county is bisected by two main national roads, along with numerous provincial and county roads. Over two years, the researchers found 11 cats killed by vehicles.

It was a problem Kong says she couldn’t ignore. By combining the GPS collar, habitat and the location data for the roadkill, she was able to identify which stretches of road were most dangerous. She then designed road signs asking motorists to slow down.

Last year, a new highway was built, and trucks and other vehicles now bypass the villages.  And because the new road crosses ravines, the cats can easily pass under the numerous bridges. Anecdotally, the problem seems to have lessened, Kong says.

Kong is now back in Beijing, analyzing her GPS collar and camera-trap data. She’s also looking at scat samples to understand what the cats are eating.  That’s important, because one of the threats to the Chinese mountain cat, as well as other medium-sized carnivores in the area, is accidental poisoning from rodenticide.

Historically, there have been widespread rodenticide application programs across the region to control rodents in croplands and grasslands. There’s debate over the effectiveness of such programs, but for now they’re ongoing in many places, Liu says. People also apply poison around their homes and in the plantations. Half of the villagers Kong surveyed said they used rodenticide. Poison accumulates as it moves up the food chain, and conservationists say they fear that carnivores like the Chinese mountain cat are also being poisoned.

Cats and dogs

Living close to humans brings other dangers too.

In many parts of the world, interbreeding between wild and feral domestic cats is an insidious and often underrecognized threat. Recent research shows that the Chinese mountain cat is no exception.

“In China, in the Tibetan region, if the domestic cat population, the feral cat population is getting bigger and bigger, it definitely will bring a threat to the local Chinese mountain cat population,” says Luo Shu-jin, a professor at Peking University. “That’s a big concern.”

In 2021, Luo co-authored a study that found there was ongoing and recent genetic introgression between Chinese mountain cats and domestic cats. Genetic introgression is  the transfer of genetic material from one species into the gene pool of another, which happens when two species interbreed over numerous generations.

Those findings were worrying, Luo says, but only based on genetic samples from four Chinese mountain cats. To figure out the full extent of the problem, they needed more samples.

Over several years, Luo and her team managed to collect samples from 51 Chinese mountain cats on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Luo and her colleagues haven’t yet published the results of their analysis, but she says they found evidence of a greater degree of introgression, with gene flow going both ways.

For example, Luo sampled one cat that had most of the markings of a Chinese mountain cat, except for a small patch of white on one paw and slightly-darker-than-usual stripes; the genetic analysis revealed about one-third genetic introgression from domestic cats.

That degree of mixing could have serious consequences for the Chinese mountain cat because they may lose unique genetic adaptations to the high-elevation environment, and their distinction as a separate species.

Luo says she’s concerned the problem could get worse. She points to the case of the Scottish wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris), where introgression from domestic cats means there are very few, if any, purebred wild individuals.

“That’s an issue that people are not paying much attention to, but that is a big concern,” she says. “We cannot let the domestic cat, the feral cat, population go uncontrolled. We are replicating what [went] on 400 years ago in Europe. And now, what happened to the Scottish wildcat could become what happens to our Chinese mountain cat.”

Semiferal dogs are also a threat. Traditionally, Tibetan herders keep guard dogs, which are left untethered for parts of the day.  The problem of free-roaming dogs has gotten worse in recent years due to a boom and bust in the market for Tibetan mastiffs, according to media reports. A craze for the large dogs among affluent Chinese in the early 2000s sent mastiff prices soaring, and breeding operations on the plateau, where the dogs are native, multiplied. Then when the craze ended and prices plummeted in 2013, many breeders couldn’t afford to maintain their dogs, so they let them loose. That sparked a surge in the number of strays.

Han, from the Shan Shui Conservation Center, says he saw the impact of dogs on the Chinese mountain cat in his denning study. Soon after the two kittens became independent, both the adult female and the young female were killed by dogs in separate incidents. The young male continued to be seen in the study area for some time.

Hunting was also listed as a threat to the Chinese mountain cat. In the past, numerous authors noted that pelts were sold in markets locally and across western China. The fur was used for hats, rugs and other purposes. But in recent years there’s been a vast improvement in the enforcement of laws around wildlife trade in China, numerous researchers say.

In 2021, the species was uplifted to Class-I National Key Protected Wildlife status in China, putting it in the same category as higher-profile species like the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) and snow leopard (Panthera uncia). All three species are also listed globally as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, but for the mountain cat, that status has yet to translate into popular awareness.

“If you see a panda killed on a road, it must be a big deal. But if you see a [Chinese] mountain cat killed on the road or in the farmland, nobody cares,” says Liu, the Qinghai Normal University professor.

But with new research and a greater awareness of how unique this cat is, researchers say they hope things will change. Fifteen years ago, no one even had a photograph of the Chinese mountain cat in the wild. Now, with the first ecological study underway, a quantification of the genetic threats, and images of a mother raising her kittens, there’s optimism that the Chinese mountain cat will finally get the attention it deserves.

Banner image: The adult female Chinese mountain cat found by Han Xue-song in winter near her den in the Sanjiangyuan region of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Image courtesy of Han Xue-song.

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Citations:

Han, X. S., Chen, H. Q., Dong, Z. Y., Xiao, L. Y., Zhao, X., & Lu, Z. (2020). Discovery of first active breeding den of Chinese mountain cat (Felis bieti). Zoological Research, 41(3), 341. doi:10.24272/j.issn.2095-8137.2020.039

He, L., García-Perea, R., Li, M., & Wei, F. (2004). Distribution and conservation status of the endemic Chinese mountain cat Felis bieti. Oryx, 38(1), 55-61. doi:10.1017/S0030605304000092

Yin, Y. F., Drubgyal, A., Lu, Z., & Sanderson, J. (2007). First photographs in nature of the Chinese mountain cat. Cat News, 47, 6-7. Retrieved from http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=182

Yu, H., Xing, Y. T., Meng, H., He, B., Li, W. J., Qi, X. Z., … Luo, S. J. (2021). Genomic evidence for the Chinese mountain cat as a wildcat conspecific (Felis silvestris bieti) and its introgression to domestic cats. Science Advances, 7(26), eabg0221. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abg0221

Kong, Y. Q., Liu, Y. L., He, C. W., Li, T. T., Li, Q. L., Ma, C. X., … Li, S. (2022). Determining the daily activity pattern of Chinese mountain cat (Felis bieti): A comparative study based on camera-trapping and satellite collar tracking data. Biodiversity Science, 30(9), 22081. doi:10.17520/biods.2022081

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AnimalsBiodiversityCatsConservationDesertsEcologyEnvironmentInvasive SpeciesMammalsResearchSmall CatsWildlifeWildlife ConservationAsiaChinaEast AsiaTibetTibetan Plateau

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