AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

With the launch of the T&T Ocelot Project, con­ser­va­tion ef­forts are ramp­ing up, sup­port­ed by new­ly in­stalled trail cam­eras to mon­i­tor the elu­sive wild cats.

Though pub­lic con­cern for the species grew af­ter an ocelot—af­fec­tion­ate­ly named “Pa­paoutai”—was shot and left with se­vere spinal in­juries ear­li­er this month, the project had al­ready been un­der­way for sev­er­al months be­fore the in­ci­dent.

PhD re­searcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford and founder of the project, Tyler Mur­ray-Ram­cha­ran, de­scribed the shoot­ing as “heart­break­ing,” say­ing it un­der­scored both the threats fac­ing the species and the grow­ing pub­lic sup­port for its pro­tec­tion.

“They are T&T’s apex preda­tor, and they main­tain for­est bal­ance by help­ing to reg­u­late the ecosys­tem,” Mur­ray-Ram­cha­ran told Guardian Me­dia.

“If we pro­tect their habi­tat, we pro­tect all of the species that share the same spaces with them.”

The size of T&T’s ocelot pop­u­la­tion re­mains un­known. How­ev­er, Mur­ray-Ram­cha­ran said the ini­tia­tive—fund­ed by the Ruf­ford Foun­da­tion and us­ing trail cam­eras placed across key ar­eas of the Ch­aguara­mas forests—is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate crit­i­cal da­ta on the species’ habi­tat, di­et and pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty to guide fu­ture con­ser­va­tion ef­forts.

“We want to even­tu­al­ly get to the stage where we’re tack­ling the ac­tu­al threats they face. We need the in­for­ma­tion to do that, so this project is geared to­wards gath­er­ing that da­ta. But in the long term, we want to ad­dress those threats to re­duce ocelot deaths over­all, whether from road col­li­sions or hunt­ing,” he said.

He added that the project will in­clude com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion, with vol­un­teers in­vit­ed to as­sist in de­ploy­ing cam­eras, re­port­ing find­ings, and shar­ing sight­ings or signs of ocelots to help re­searchers bet­ter un­der­stand the pop­u­la­tion. Prizes may al­so be of­fered for such re­ports.

Mur­ray-Ram­cha­ran al­so ad­vised the pub­lic on what to do if they en­counter an ocelot: “Stand very still, count your­self very lucky, have a good look, and let it move on…it is not look­ing at us as prey.”