International Big Cats Alliance (IBCA)
Why in news:
- Recently PM Narendra Modi launched the International Big Cats Alliance (IBCA) during his visit to Karnataka.
- The focus of the international big cat alliance will be on the conservation of the world’s seven major big cats, including tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, puma, jaguar and cheetah.
PUMA CAT:
- Pumas are large, secretive cats.
- They are also commonly known as cougars and mountain lions, and are able to reach larger sizes than some other “big” cat individuals.
- Despite their large size, they are more closely related to smaller feline species than to lions or leopards.
- The seven subspecies of pumas all have similar characteristics but tend to vary in color and size.
- Pumas are the most adaptable felines in the Americas and are found in a variety of different habitats, unlike other cat species.
Distribution and Habitat:
- Members of the genus Puma are primarily found in the mountains of North and South America, where a majority of individuals can be found in rocky crags and pastures lower than the slopes grazing herbivores inhabit.
- Though they choose to inhabit those areas, they are highly adaptive and can be found in a large variety of habitats, including forests, tropical jungle, grasslands, and even arid desert regions.
- With the expansion of human settlements and land clearance, the cats are being pushed into smaller, more hostile areas.
- However, their high adaptability will likely allow them to avoid disappearing from the wild forever.
Conservation:
- Although they have been pushed into smaller habitats by human settlement expansion, members of the genus have been designated least-concern by the IUCN, indicating low risk of becoming extinct in their natural environments in the near future.
- This is due to their high adaptiveness to changing habitat conditions.
Jaguar:
- The jaguar is a large catspecies and the only living member of the genus Panthera native to the Americas.
- It is the largest cat species in the Americas and the third largest in the world.
- Its distinctively marked coat features pale yellow to tan colored fur covered by spots that transition to rosettes on the sides, although a melanistic black coat appears in some individuals.
- Melanistic jaguars are also known as black panthers.
- The black morph is less common than the spotted one.
- Black jaguars have been documented in Central and South America.
- The modern jaguar’s ancestors probably entered the Americas from Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene via the land bridge that once spanned the Bering Strait.
- Today, the jaguar’s range extends from core Southwestern United States across Mexico and much of Central America the Amazon rainforest and south to Paraguay and northern Argentina.
- It inhabits a variety of forested and open terrains, but its preferred habitat is tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest, wetlands and wooded regions.
- It is adept at swimming and is largely a solitary, opportunistic, stalk-and-ambush apex predator.
- As a keystone species, it plays an important role in stabilizing ecosystems and in regulating prey populations.
- The jaguar is threatened by habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, poaching for trade with its body parts and killings in human-wildlife conflict situations, particularly with ranchers in Central and Sourth America.
- It has been listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List since 2002.
Syllabus: Prelims + Mains; GS III – Agriculture
