Fishing Cats in Chilka

Despite all the odds, Odisha has managed to ‘swipe right’ for the Fishing Cat, its official mascot! The IUCN Vulnerable species, which is faring poorly in most other parts of its range because of habitat loss, poaching, retaliatory killings and aquaculture, is thriving in India’s second largest lake, Chilka.

Green Humour for Roundglass Sustain. An earlier comic on the appointment of the species as Chilka’s official mascot was also published in my Roundglass column.

Read the survey report by Arathi Menon for Mongabay here.

Read more about Tiasa Adhya’s The Fishing Cat Project here. A comic about her Fishing Cat conservation efforts in Howrah features in my book, The Great Indian Nature Trail with Chunmun.

In a 2018 project, I had the opportunity to illustrate Mangalajodi- a part of the Chilka.