Urban habitat use and home ranges of fishing cats in Colombo, Sri Lanka

Urbanisation and habitat loss are major threats to wildlife populations globally. Understanding how species respond to anthropogenic changes is therefore crucial to mitigating threats and developing conservation management strategies. We examined the habitat use of five fishing cats (Prionailurus viverrinus) in Sri Lanka’s capital city, Colombo, a densely urbanised landscape with a mosaic of wetland habitats, cultivated areas, and altered open spaces. We investigated: (1) to what extent all five cats used human-impacted versus natural wetland habitat; (2) whether there were behavioural shifts to avoid human activity throughout the diel cycle; (3) the home range sizes of two resident females and one resident male, and the extent of the area used by the two translocated males; (4) whether the two translocated males would survive introduction to a new urban environment. We monitored the fishing cats for 637 days (mean = 127) and collected a total of 2278 GPS (5-h interval) collar locations. We found that all five individuals used highly urbanised areas more than we expected. Home range sizes of the three residents were smaller than fishing cat home ranges in less disturbed landscapes. Though our sample size was small, our findings suggest that fishing cats use urbanised areas in Colombo, particularly at night, likely to avoid daytime human activity. Further comprehensive ecological study is needed to explore the aspects of fishing cat ecology that facilitate their persistence, and aid in their conservation across increasingly urbanised areas.