Research
Prior to 1998, the only evidence of this cat's existence was two photographs. It was then that Jim Sanderson took up his quest to find the Andean mountain cat. Sanderson sighted and photographed one in Chile in 1998 near Chile's northern border with Peru. In 2004, he joined a Bolivian research team and helped radio-collar an Andean cat in Bolivia. In April 2005, this cat was found dead, perhaps after being caught in a poacher's trap.
Sanderson is still heavily involved with the Andean cat. With coworkers Constanza Napolitano, Lilian Villalba, and Eliseo Delgado and others in the Andean Cat Alliance, the Small Cat Conservation Alliance has forged conservation agreements with Fundación Biodiversitas, a Chilean non-profit organization, and CONAF, the government agency responsible for managing national parks and production forests. CONAF has agreed to allow the SCCA to renovate a building for the Andean Cat Conservation and Monitoring Center on their already-functioning compound at San Pedro de Atacama in Chile.
Villalba of the Andean Cat Alliance conducted a major research program, including radio-telemetry studies, from 2001 to 2006 in the Khastor region of southern Bolivia.
Conservation efforts are also being made by the Feline Conservation Federation to preserve this species.
Read more about this topic: Andean Mountain Cat
Famous quotes containing the word research:
“Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“One of the most important findings to come out of our research is that being where you want to be is good for you. We found a very strong correlation between preferring the role you are in and well-being. The homemaker who is at home because she likes that “job,” because it meets her own desires and needs, tends to feel good about her life. The woman at work who wants to be there also rates high in well-being.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“... research is never completed ... Around the corner lurks another possibility of interview, another book to read, a courthouse to explore, a document to verify.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)