Abstract
Understanding the distribution and conservation status of small carnivores is critical for informing management strategies in human-modified landscapes. We assembled a comprehensive dataset of jungle cat (Felis chaus) presence across India, drawing from over 26,000 camera trap locations, radio-telemetry data, published literature, secondary sources, and verified sightings. After filtering for spatial redundancy, we modeled species distribution using ecologically relevant covariates in both maximum entropy (MaxEnt) and random forest (RF) frameworks. The resulting ensemble model indicated that jungle cats are most likely to occur in warm, semi-arid regions with moderate vegetation cover and low to moderate levels of human and livestock disturbance. In contrast, they tend to avoid dense forests and highly transformed habitats. Despite their broad geographic distribution, jungle cats face increasing threats from habitat fragmentation, expanding infrastructure, road mortality, disease transmission from free-ranging dogs, and genetic introgression through hybridization with domestic cats. These pressures are particularly acute in peri-urban and agro-pastoral landscapes where jungle cats persist outside protected areas. Our findings underscore the importance of rural lifestyles with agro-pastoralism livelihoods for conserving the species along with grasslands, savanna and open forest systems to ensure the species’ long-term viability in a rapidly urbanizing landscape.
Data availability
Home range parameters are available in the Supplementary Material of Katna et al. 2022 and Bandyopadhyay et al., unpublished manuscript, and summarized location data are presented in the figure and all camera trap records of the species are collected from Data Repository of https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk4827. All the secondary data were collated from personal observations of YVJ, published telemetry studies and Jungle cat telemetry study of Kuno National Park. These data may be shared with bona fide researchers upon reasonable request to the corresponding author. All data access requests should be directed to the corresponding author.
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Acknowledgements
The study was conducted in collaboration with the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, the University of Wyoming, and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). We are grateful to UW Global, Koprowski Conservation Research Laboratory, and an anonymous donor for providing funds for KB while writing the manuscript. We acknowledge the huge camera trapping effort by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the State Forest Departments for assessing the tiger population of India, the jungle cat photo locations were bycatch of this exercise. We thank Dhananjaysinh Y. Jhala for critical discussions and suggestions regarding the manuscript. We thank the Director, Dean, Registrar, and Research Coordinator at WII for their facilitation.
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KB and YVJ conceived the study. Field data were collected by KB, JLK, QQ and YVJ. KB, DJ, and YVJ conducted the data analysis. KB drafted the initial version of the manuscript. YVJ, QQ and JLK served as project administrators and secured funding for the completion of the project. All authors reviewed and provided comments on the manuscript.
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Bandyopadhyay, K., Jain, D., Koprowski, J. et al. Distribution and conservation status of the jungle cat (Felis chaus) across India. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-39033-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-39033-1
