Unnamed Guest (10:08)

It sounds like one of the factors that played in the favor of these cats is that people didn't know much about them and even thought that they did not exist in the numbers that you found later they did. Is it a little bit strange to then shed light on that fact if you think man, maybe that was doing them some good, that they weren't well known. Ultimately we know that doesn't work in their favor long term for conservation. But still it must seem a little weird to now be doing education and working with people and letting them know that these things, not the palace cap, but the rest of them are doing a little better than people thought, I would say 100%.

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (10:54)

And this thing, although we wouldn't suspect it to be a positive factor, but it is to be honest, people not knowing about a existence of the species in and around their habitats. In Sin province in the lower end of the region where fishing gas are, has played definitely a big positive role in keeping them secure. Because when it comes to Pakistan we have a big underground and illegal wildlife trade industry. And although it does sometimes have fishing pads to sell and everything, but it still isn't Popular to that extent. People have no idea we have characters, people have no idea we have sand cats and fishing cuts sometimes. So that's super helpful because. All right, as you said in the conservation side of affairs, it isn't helpful on the long term basis, which, you know, we'll get to. But at the moment, it is super helpful because people who do not know of its existence are not interested in keeping them as pets. It's just one of the threats that is affiliated with this phenomena. So we're just. Yeah, we're glad it hasn't happened yet.

Unnamed Guest (12:02)

In the United States and other countries, building a groundswell of support from the public often is used to get the government to do something for protection, to look at new legislation or protected areas. Would that be the same kind of thing that you're trying to do there, to get people excited about and proud of that natural heritage and put some pressure on governing bodies to. To help protect them?

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (12:35)

Yes, precisely. So you see, when it comes to the Indus floodplain region, which is the plains of country, we have lost all of our iconic and charismatic predators of the past. We lost the tiger, we lost the lion, we lost the cheetah, we lost the leopard. And we are on our way to this much more if we are not putting a stop at the moment and right now. So in a way, our goal is to promote these meso carnivores as much as possible to an extent where people take pride in them and people are responsible and are proud of protecting these last wild predators. So we're, in a way, trying to promote conservation to the same extent as possible, as with DIYers in India and going into habitat protection and advocacy and promotion. Hopefully we can push the government to create more protected areas because they're definitely needed.

Jack Humphrey (13:34)

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Unnamed Guest (14:00)

Thank you. Would another inadvertent protection factor be geography and just the difficult terrains of Pakistan for some species that really worked in their favor thus far? And does that present any.

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (14:20)

Yes.

Unnamed Guest (14:21)

Any challenges for you in studying these cats?

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (14:25)

All right, so I have the perfect example for that. Sand cats, right? Sand cats are amazing. These small wild cats that are dedicated to the most remote desert regions of the country. And they're found across from North Africa onwards to Middle east and extending, just extending into Pakistan, which is the easternmost range of the species. So sand cats occur in the Kharan Desert, which is on the border with Afghanistan. Afghanistan and the border region with Afghanistan creates a ton of issues when it comes to researching the species, when it comes to logistics out there, the reach we can get into the area. So I personally have been trying to get to the region for two years. Something seems to happen. And the local political instability and the remoteness of the region causes of issues for people to get to. So that enables the conservation of the species to occur. Because the cat is left alone. At the end of the day, you want to keep the species just as disconnected from human populations as possible. They're perfectly fine. They have little to no human threats that we know of currently. We're still working on that. And they are perfectly disjunct. They're away from human settlements because of the remoteness of the region, the vastness of the region and as well as the local political instability, which I am not promoting at any cost. But it's actually benefiting the survival of the species in our personal understanding and when it comes to the question of how we know what we know in the local area. So what we did in terms of our strategy from last two years is that obviously we cannot be researchers. Let's say I'm based in Karachi. I cannot get to Haran or Nushki. Nishki is the name of the city which is close to the border of Pakistan and that's where we have sand cats. So I'm obviously going to get there and I don't have to get there because at the end of the day we need local and dedicated researchers of the specialized regions of local population dedicated to the conservation and taking up their interest. And they're taking the pride in protecting the skill species dedicated to that region, basically. So we have local researchers who are much more perfectly capable of traveling in and out of that area than I am. So I would be easily noticeable because of the looks that I have. But locals in that area won't be noticed, right? So they can easily go out and camera trap as much as possible. But if I go there personally and camera trap and then given the political instability or the area, the security situation just wouldn't be in my favor. So I guess such things, keeping visitors away from the region, I'm just throwing it out there, does inadvertently help the survival of the species.

Unnamed Guest (17:14)

Yeah. I think it's really cool though that you figured out, let's just put people on the ground who are native to that area instead of putting yourself or others in danger. That might even actually be better then your organization going all over and being solely responsible. The only way that I've ever heard that adoption of a cause such as the sand cats or others is if you have local buy in. So it's almost like you could just say it was a strategy to begin with. We needed local buy in. So we put locals in charge of camera traps.

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (17:51)

Yes, precisely. And it's working excellently. And we have copied that mechanism with other species. So what we have going on now is we have a targeted person dedicated to all eight small wildcat species. So we have eight people for eight species and it's people targeted with targeted to one species and getting a much more focused impact that we are hoping for and working out perfectly that eight species.

Unnamed Guest (18:21)

It seems rich. That seems like a lot for, for any place. When we talk about we have ocelot, jaguarundi and jaguar. And jaguar is way too big to fit into this category, primarily in the south and in northern Mexico and we feel quite biodiverse and rich in cats for that. But eight, that's crazy.

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (18:47)

Yeah, yeah. And it's. We're super grateful to be in a region which is so biodiverse because it's a small piece of land. Pakistan is not huge compared to let's say for example, China, for example, or Russia. But when it comes to the habitat diversity we have, it just works out really well. We have the oriental brand that comes into the region eastwards from India. So we have South Asia, Asian Asian zoo geographical zone. Then we have Arctic zone coming into the north of the country and the west. And that's where you have the links coming in. You have the fishing gut coming in from east, you have the links coming in from the north and you have the Sinusar and realm that hits Pakistan to the extreme west. And then you have sandcat. It works out really well.

Unnamed Guest (19:34)

I was just thinking somebody's going to get mad at me if I don't include bobcat. So sorry, bobcat people.

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (19:42)

Yeah.

Unnamed Guest (19:43)

And also a small population of lynx near the border with Colorado. I don't want to leave those out. We're not doing too bad. But you're still beating us with eight. That's pretty dang cool. I wonder if size has something to do with it too. Size is always a factor when humans are determined to wipe out a species. It didn't take very long or it probably wasn't very difficult to wipe out the tiger just because of the size of the habitat, the needs and the size of the cat itself. It just feels like these are all the smaller cats go under the radar in many different ways in their habitat, their habits and their sheer size. Is that is, am I being biologically correct or is that too simplistic?

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (20:27)

Totally, you are totally correct because when you see. So there's also other aspects to take into account such as the feeding behavior, their foraging behavior and everything. Take tiger for example. So tigers used to occur in the Induscript and region in the same habitat as fishing cats. You can see this aspect in the Terai region of Nepal or you could also see it in Kaziranga national park in India. So it's the same habitat we used to have in the Indus region. But tigers were difficult to work with for local populations because they used to cause huge attacks. Fishing cats are definitely their size of a small dog, right? Like a medium sized dog. But they are strong, they can take down dogs. They have taken down dogs in the settlements we work with, but they don't necessarily do it right. They are highly nocturnal, they're highly secretive, they tend, they stick to the wetlands and they if you have your prey protected and if you do not just go after them, you know you're leaving the cat alone, the cat's left alone, it perfectly cohabits with the local population. And so win win example, it just works out. But when it comes to the larger and the big cats, you know, you have conflict easily because the big cats need bigger areas. They cannot go easily unnoticed because they is huge and they may see human populations as a potential additional prey species. But fishing cats or other small wildcat species just do not do that. So that just is extremely helpful to work with such animals and their conservation because it is beneficial for us. But when it comes to the conservation of larger and bigger carnivores, it's much more difficult and tricky. So yeah, in a way I guess it does make sense how big cats were lost from the Indus blood plain region. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have, they should have been lost. I do regret that a lot and I wish we had the, we had tigers still. But yeah, in a way the size and foraging behavior and the needs of the species has definitely benefited the survival of fishing cats and the rest of the small seven wildcat species in the country.

Unnamed Guest (22:38)

What kind of synergy do you have? Now you're looking at these cats you have been for the past few years with other organizations who are working on wetlands issues and with other species. I'm sure you've made lots of friends who are working, studying everything from fish to other species and this might be helping their work as well. How does that look with the organizations that you've met and you've worked with?

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (23:06)

Okay. In terms of the wildlife conservation arena in the country, I would say we have very few organizations that are actually working on ground to research and wireless conservation issues. So we have very small parties involved. You have large organizations like WWF and IUCN and then you just don't have other interested organizations that are working on wildlife conservation issues. So that is a major gap. I guess I've also thought about this issue for a while. I think that's something that needs to happen in Pakistan because we need more organization, we need much more player so we can, you know, form an alliance. Because as you said, the issues we work with, that not necessarily being the same targeted species, they are interlinked and it's benefiting the whole conservation community. At the end of the day, I'm connected with WWF and give exchange a lot of information and guidance and IUC as well and the local wildlife department are major stakeholders. Those are one big party that we work with it a lot and dedicatedly. But aside from that, there's, I would say, very few organizations that are actually working.

Unnamed Guest (24:20)

What kind of support are you getting from IUCN and World Wildlife as examples?

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (24:27)

So they were really helpful with getting us information on how to start and where to look at and focus. Because WWF Pakistan was the first organization to actually camera shop fish and cats in Sanger, which is a small wetland closer to the Indian border. So that was really exciting. So those were the guys I first reached out to because I was a student and I had no idea which areas to focus on. I had no idea that was so widespread and we could find it in so many places. I thought there was just one minor secluded hotspot in the whole country where we could still find fishing cats, but it's not as such. And so those are really excellent and helpful because they identified other regions that we could potentially look into and that worked out really well. IUCN was really helpful to help us with setting up pace in terms of advocacy for habitat protection and how we can potentially use our camera trapping data, our surveys and field surveys, and use them to actually push and motivate the local dedicated bodies to better protection and better effectiveness of the law.

Unnamed Guest (25:33)

What direction is conservation moving in Pakistan? Do you feel like it's going in the right direction, that there's more awareness, there's more interest is I'm sure you feel like it's moving too slow. But does it feel like that, that things are getting better or worse or just people don't pay much attention to conservation and it's pretty lonely?

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (25:56)

Excellent question. Something that needs to be discussed. So the thing is, in Pakistan, the most common base of awareness, education and knowledge base is definitely increasing, which is a huge plus point because now people are aware of having fishing cats in their Indus footprint regions. So the knowledge and skill set is definitely increasing and awareness is increasing. But at the same time you would expect conservation actions and organizations to increase at the same time, but that's not increasing. So the amount of actions and initiatives you would expect to be to have been undertaken by now, that has not happened. And the political will and the political interest by our government and stakeholder level to increase protected area level. Let's say we want to have 30% total landmass under protected areas by 2030. That's not happening. Even if we have national parks being formed, it's only on paper. Like take Pakistan Sindh Province for example, where I'm based and working mainly. So Sindh province is a huge amount of land, but you only have one national park, right? And that national park was formed in 1972. But if you go to the national park right now, you won't find a single information center. You cannot find your access to the national park properly. You have let's say two or three check posts within the national park, but that's, it's completely informal. There's huge mismanagement right now. The national park has been eaten away by housing societies. There's illegal sand mining, rock mining. You look at this and then you look at the global conservation interest which is expanding and blooming and there's so many stakeholders involved. It's. The situation is much better than it was, let's say 20 years ago. But when it comes to, when you see Pakistan and you see how Pakistan is representing its values internationally, that you see the on ground situation, there's nothing happening. You do wonder whether the government is actually interested in doing what they are promising and what they're signing up for, all these international policies and all these action plans that they're working on, it's. That side of affairs is really discouraging. But hey, at least we keep trying. There's a conversation I had with a friend last night where we were discussing about the last wolf pack, possibly the last wolf pack close to Karachi, actually, in the Karachi district. Karachi is a huge city. It's the largest city in the country. It's not slowing down anytime soon when it comes to its growth. But so the Wolf pact is going to be lost soon because there's a lot of human wildlife conflict in that region. And we were talking about the political instability and the security situations. And by the way, that's in the Kirto national park area. It's in one of the corners of the national park. So my friend was like, he was extremely discouraged by how the situation is within the park. If you are not safe, you travel there. Why work and risk your life to dedicate tools? But at the same time, if not us, who is going to come for them? It's things like this which are keeping us conflicted and. But at the same time, we're working and it's slowly positive at the same time. By the way, I have a friend who is working on Butterflies of Pakistan. That was completely unheard of to be worked on by a local Pakistani, let's say, 20 years ago, but now he's working on a book. Now we have dedicated ornithologists working on birds. Birds are another super dedicated interest of mine. And there's people working on amphibians. And so the thing is, the research is increasing, right? The research and interest and skill set and knowledge is definitely increasing, but the local and serious interest and action, the real grassroots action is missing. Research and conservation goes hand in hand, but if you don't have one aspect of it, so you might as well not do it.

Unnamed Guest (30:04)

As Michael Sule, when he started people thinking about conservation biology, there was a lot of research being done, which was really disheartening for him because all that research was leading to no results politically or protections on the ground, or very few. And that's why he said, you have to speak up. You have to. You can't just study things. You can't just stay in your lab or in your study area and find that your area is under threat or the species you're working on is under threat, and then just stay purely scientific and not get into the mix and at least educate people on what you're finding outside of writing papers that no one reads. And I see you doing that coming on the podcast and letting people know about areas and cats and other issues in places that we don't hear a lot about. We just don't hear about Pakistani conservation issues that much. And so this is a really big thing and you're leading the way. I didn't know if you were joining an already established effort to do outreach and things, it seems to me now that you're at the tip of the spear. So congratulations and thank you very much for that. You're going to be seen as a hero one day as this picks up. Secondly, I would say I was looking at the national park boundary, as I do with maps. I look and I go, that's protected. Oh, good. Look at that whole area. That's protected. I was a little sad to hear that you that there's not a lot of actual protection there. And that's something that we're combating and watching very closely here in the United States. Nothing conservation wise is really happening here right. Right now under the current political regime. But we had a. Everybody around the world has got a goal of 30 by 30 and we didn't want that to be paper protection either. Just on paper. But on the ground it looks like it's all torn up or people are doing things they shouldn't be. That is also a very big thing to keep an eye out for. You could look at it two different ways. You could look at it as this is a bummer because there's not enough happening and there's not enough. But at the same time, you're here providing us with hope. That brings me to my next question. What can anybody outside of Pakistan do to help you to support your work or the work of conservation overall in your country?

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (32:27)

I think with the species we work with and this special group of animals, I think talking and sharing about this species helps a lot. Raising awareness, letting people know that it's out there is just as helpful as the fact that you're on ground and helping us with conservation actions. It's the same thing. For me personally, people knowing that we have fishing gats in the country is. Was completely unheard of, let's say, five years ago. When people are super interested to know that there's a species in the country that is so elusive and so interesting to work with.

Unnamed Guest (33:02)

Our extra credit section on this episode's page@rewilding.org pod you can look up the fishing cat and you'll see the episode should be really bursting with tons of really cool stuff that Zafir will help me get together and I will put together so that you can dig deeper into this subject.

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (33:23)

People taking interest is our dream. So that's perfect. And thank you for giving us this opportunity.

Unnamed Guest (33:29)

Zafir. Thank you so much. I wish you all the luck in the world. We will be looking forward to hearing from you. As all of your studies progress and as you develop ways to keep people informed. Any newsletters, email lists, or anything like that, please do let us know and we will make sure everybody knows about it.

Zafir Ahmed Shaikh (33:50)

This is amazing. Thank you Jack for having me and for giving us an opportunity to share about our work. I'm just super excited to have you can listen to our work and thank you for that.

Jack Humphrey (34:02)

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