On the evening of August 7, the phrase that surfaced in Parliament was an unusual one for a national debate: a fishing cat.
The Fishing Cat is protected under Schedule I of India’s Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and is classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Photograph: (X/ Samik Bhattacharya)
Not a tiger. Not an elephant. A shy, water-loving cat most Indians have never seen and many have never heard of. Yet MP Samik Bhattacharya stood to demand a dedicated National Action Plan for it — and the reasons he gave should worry anyone who cares about where India’s wild spaces are going.
To understand why a single cat reached the floor of Parliament, you have to follow it to the water’s edge.
A cat that chose the water
Picture the animal at dusk. It moves along the rim of a pond, low and deliberate, then pauses — ankle-deep in the shallows — waiting. A ripple. A strike. Few cats on Earth hunt like this.
The Fishing Cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) is one of them. Muscular, compact, with partially webbed feet, it is among the rare felids built for aquatic hunting. Fish are its mainstay, though it will also take birds, rodents, crabs, reptiles and amphibians. It hunts along watercourses, reaches into the water for prey, and when it has to, swims after it.
For this cat, wetlands are not merely habitat. They are the whole logic of its existence.
On paper, it is well guarded — protected under Schedule I of India’s Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. But paper protection means little when the water itself is disappearing.
The journeys that turned deadly
Once, the cat’s movements were simple: pond to marsh, marsh to reed bed, following the water. Today those same journeys cross roads, skirt farms and press up against human settlements. And that is exactly where a wetland specialist runs out of luck.
The numbers from southern West Bengal are stark. Between 2010 and 2021, across 15 districts, 115 Fishing Cats died and 91 were rescued. Most of the deaths came down to two things: conflict and traffic.
Parliamentary records cited in the recent discussion put West Bengal at the top of the country for documented Fishing Cat deaths — 77 incidents in a decade. Around 70 deaths in recent years were caused by vehicle collisions alone, on road networks that don’t just kill the cat outright but slice its wetlands into disconnected fragments.
I have put forward a really significant issue on the floor of the house. Fishing cat which is West Bengal’s State Animal is on the verge of being an endangered species due to environmental issues and human animal conflict. I requested the govt to form a National Conservation Plan pic.twitter.com/F4tpc03p2l
— Samik Bhattacharya (@SamikBJP) August 7, 2026
And the danger isn’t confined to one corner of the state. The species has been recorded across Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas and Bardhaman.
A ghost in coal country
Then there is the encounter no one expected.
In 2024, a camera trap tucked into the Madhaiganj forest area near Durgapur — industrial land, coal country — caught something extraordinary: an adult female Fishing Cat. It was the first confirmed record from Paschim Bardhaman.
A cat of marshes, swamps and mangroves, holding on in a landscape of factories and coal. The sighting was a quiet reminder that these animals are more resilient, and more widespread, than we assume — and that we may be losing habitat we never even knew they were using.
When the water runs out
The Wildlife Institute of India’s new assessment — released just last week — points to a shift in how we should understand the threat. Fishing Cats don’t live only inside protected forests. Some of their most important habitats overlap with aquaculture ponds, village water bodies and farmland.
That overlap is where the killing happens. WII notes that conflict is sharpest outside protected areas, where the cats brush up against poultry farms, fishing grounds and settlements. Retaliatory killings have been recorded as a major cause of death, particularly in the Sundarbans and along the eastern coast.
Fishing Cats have been recorded in wetlands across Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia, the North and South 24 Parganas and Bardhaman. Photograph: (Roland Seitre/Minden Pictures)
Meanwhile, the ground beneath the species is literally shrinking. Suitable Fishing Cat habitat has declined by nearly 44 percent, according to research cited during the parliamentary discussion, as wetland encroachment, unplanned urban sprawl, pollution and aquaculture reshape the landscape.
For a young cat, this is where the story turns cruel. Juveniles typically leave their birth areas at around 10 months, striking out through riverine corridors and wetland networks to find territory of their own. In an intact landscape, it’s a rite of passage. In a fragmented one, it becomes a gauntlet of roads, canals and villages — and losing the connections between wetlands doesn’t just erase habitat. It strands whole populations, and turns every young cat’s search for a home into a potentially fatal crossing.
The other picture: Kaziranga
But this is not a story of inevitable disappearance — and Assam proves it.
Last year, the first scientific assessment of Fishing Cats in Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve recorded 57 individuals across more than 450 sq km of floodplain. The survey, by Kaziranga’s Tiger Cell and the Fishing Cat Project, found the species widely distributed and actively breeding.
The survey by Kaziranga’s Tiger Cell and the Fishing Cat Project found that the species was widely distributed and actively reproducing there. Photograph: (Big Cat Rescue)
The most striking part: that number may be an undercount. Researchers weren’t even using cameras set for Fishing Cats — they were analysing images originally captured to monitor tigers. Where the wetlands stay whole and connected, the cat doesn’t just survive. It thrives.
Protect the cat, protect the wetland
That contrast — southern Bengal’s losses against Kaziranga’s abundance — is what makes the new WII plan matter.
It recommends prioritising wetlands where Fishing Cats are confirmed or suspected, assessing habitat quality, and identifying the corridors that link populations, with special focus on landscapes under pressure from conversion, aquaculture, pollution and roadkill. Crucially, it looks beyond protected areas to community-managed and multiple-use wetlands — the very places where the cats and people collide.
Bhattacharya’s proposals run in parallel: a dedicated National Action Plan, stronger protection for key wetlands under the Wetlands Rules, 2017, road mitigation measures, community-based conservation, and compensation for communities hit by human-wildlife conflict.
Which brings the debate back to where it began — the water’s edge.
The Fishing Cat’s survival may come down to a single, deceptively simple question: whether there is still enough water, enough vegetation and enough connected habitat for it to move through — without ending up on a road, or in a village. Parliament, for one evening, decided that question was worth asking.
