Overview

• Six wild cat species were documented in West Kameng and Tawang: Pallas’s cat, snow leopard, common leopard, clouded leopard, leopard cat, and marbled cat.
• India-highest elevation records included common leopard at 4,600 m, clouded leopard at 4,650 m, marbled cat at 4,326 m, Himalayan wood owl at 4,194 m, and grey-headed flying squirrel at 4,506 m.
• WWF-India deployed 136 camera traps at 83 sites across roughly 2,000 km² between July and September 2024, with devices active for more than eight months in harsh terrain.
• The work was carried out under a UK-funded Darwin Initiative project with guidance from local communities and support from the Arunachal Pradesh Forest Department.
• The Pallas’s cat record sits just below the species’ global elevation peak and extends its known range in the eastern Himalaya beyond earlier records from Sikkim, Bhutan, and eastern Nepal.