CARACAL

CARACAL

Context:

The National Board for Wildlife and Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change last month included the caracal, a medium-sized wildcat found in parts of Rajasthan and Gujarat, in the list of critically endangered species

Concept:

• The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists caracals as a species of ‘least concern’, mainly due to their large numbers in Africa. But in India they are ‘endangered’.
• Now it is classified as ‘Critically Endangered’ in India.
• Since 2001, the Caracal’s presence has been only reported the three states, including Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh

About Caracal

• Besides India, the caracal is found in several dozen countries across Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia. While it flourishes in parts of Africa, its numbers in Asia are declining.
• The caracal wild cat (Caracal caracal) is a rare species in India.
• The wildcat has long legs, a short face, long canine teeth, and distinctive ears — long and pointy, with tufts of black hair at their tips. The iconic ears are what give the animal its name — caracal comes from the Turkish karakulak, meaning ‘black ears’. In India, it is called siya gosh, a Persian name that translates as ‘black Ear’. A Sanskrit fable exists about a small wild cat named deergha-karn or ‘long-eared’.
• In Kutch dialect of Gujarat Caracals are locally referred to as Hornotro which means killer of a Blackbuck whereas in Rajasthan it is known as Junglee Bilaoor Wildcat.
• They are mostly found in the tropical dry deciduous and tropical thorn and shrub forests of Central and Western India.
• The caracal has historically lived in 13 Indian states, in nine out of the 26 biotic provinces. In the period before Independence, the animal roamed an estimated area of 7.9 lakh sq km; between then and 2000, however, this habitat shrunk by almost a half. After 2001, sightings have been reported from only three states.
• “From 2001 to 2020, the reported extent of occurrence further decreased by 95.95%, with current presence restricted to 16,709 sq km, less than 5% of the caracal’s reported extent of occurrence in the 1948-2000 period,” according to Khandal et al.
• The caracal could be earlier found in arid and semi-arid scrub forest and ravines in Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh. Today, its presence is restricted to Rajasthan, Kutch, and parts of MP.
• Caracals had appeared in Indian paintings dating back to seventeenth century.
• The caracal has traditionally been valued for its litheness and extraordinary ability to catch birds in flight; it was a favourite coursing or hunting animal in medieval India.
• Their survival in India is endangered primary reasons being the rapid loss of scrub and thorn habitat and unchecked human activates in the caracals habitat

How listing as critically endangered will help?

The listing of the caracal as critically endangered is expected to bring central funding to conservation efforts. It is likely to ensure that the animal is studied comprehensively for the first time, including its home range, population, prey, etc.

Interesting facts:

• The caracal has traditionally been valued for its litheness and extraordinary ability to catch birds in flight; it was a favourite coursing or hunting animal in medieval India.
• Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1351-88) had siyah-goshdarkhana, stables that housed large numbers of coursing caracal. It finds mention in AbulFazl’sAkbarnama, as a hunting animal in the time of Akbar (1556-1605). Descriptions and illustrations of the caracal can be found in medieval texts such as the Anvar-i-Suhayli, Tutinama, Khamsa-e-Nizami, and Shahnameh.
• The caracal’s use as a coursing animal is believed to have taken it far beyond its natural range to places like Ladakh in the north to Bengal in the east. The East India Company’s Robert Clive is said to have been presented with a caracal after he defeated Siraj-ud-daullah in the Battle of Plassey (1757).