Grant programme enables urgent action to protect Pallas’s cats

The Pallas’s cat International Conservation Alliance (PICA) is a collaboration between RZSS, Norden’s Ark and the Snow Leopard Trust and supported by Fondation Segre. Together, and with additional funding from zoos around the world, we build capacity for Pallas’s cat conservation efforts in range countries like Iran, Nepal, Pakistan. As one of the smallest and least known cats in the world, we need to understand more about Pallas’s cat threats, distribution, status and ecology in order to best protect this charismatic species.

The PICA Small Grant Programme (SGP) was established last year and is supported by zoological collections from around the world. The SGP enables projects and teams on the ground to initiate some of the most urgent conservation actions for the Pallas’s cat, and after receiving generous funding, was able to be rolled out again in 2021. This year, three projects from three countries have been awarded grants for their work.

Selected from a total of nine applications from an incredible seven countries, these projects in Nepal, Turkmenistan and Bhutan will work to address the priorities defined in the Pallas’s cat Conservation Strategy, developed in the initial phase of PICA, and contribute to Pallas’s cat conservation.

Award winners:

Density, activity pattern and threats of Manul in Central Himalaya of Nepal. Forum of Natural Resource Managers, Nepal.

Finding Manul: Understanding the distribution and threats. Team Bars Turkmenistan.

Assessing the conservation status of Pallas’s cats in Bhutan. Ugyen Wangchuck Institute for Conservation and Environmental Research, Department of Forest and Park Services, Bhutan.