The Pampas grasslands, spanning southern Brazil, Uruguay, and northeastern Argentina, are home to a wildcat so rare that researchers consider it the most endangered of its kind in the Americas, and possibly the world. Most sightings of this domestic cat-sized feline come from camera-trap images that have documented its distinctive fawn-colored coat, fluffy fur and black-striped legs. It’s the elusive Muñoa’s Pampas cat, also known as the Uruguayan Pampas cat (Leopardus munoai). “There’s an estimated 100 individuals or less left in the wild,” Fábio Mazim, an ecologist from Pró-Carnívoros, a conservation nonprofit that focuses on carnivorous mammals in Brazil, told Mongabay. “It’s a species that, I believe, will be extinct in five to 10 years.” So little is known about Muñoa’s Pampas cat that scientists can’t even agree on whether it’s a distinct species, Leopardus munoai, or a subspecies of the Pampas cat, Leopardus colocola. Although L. munoai isn’t yet recognized by the Cat Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, scientists began to acknowledge it as a distinct species in 2021. Little is known about the Muñoa’s pampas cat. Experts say it lives like a nomad wandering around the grasslands looking for suitable habitats. Image © Fábio Mazim, Paulo Wagner, Maurício Santos, Moisés Barp, Yan Rodrigues/Bichos Raros do Pampa projeto (Rare Animals of the Pampas). Conserving the cat hasn’t been easy. Recent floods in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, among the worst natural disasters in the country’s history, have submerged almost the entire…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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