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The Elusive Andean Cat: A Conservation Journey
Many conservationists dedicated to protecting the endangered Andean cat have never seen one in the wild, with the species known to science by just a few photos until the late 1990s. It took Juan Reppucci, leader of the Andean Cat Alliance’s In the Field 24/7 program, nine years to spot one of these elusive cats in its natural habitat.
The Andean cat (Leopardus jacobita) is one of South America’s most endangered small cat species, roaming the high Andes of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. About the size of a domestic cat, it resembles a miniature snow leopard. Thick fur and an elongated tail make it well adapted to the harsh alpine environment it calls home and for chasing its favorite prey — vizcacha, a rabbit-resembling rodent — across rocky landscapes.
Reppucci’s sighting happened on a very “weird” day, he recalls. While out looking for a radio collar that had fallen from a Pampas cat (L. colocolo) in Jujuy province, Argentina, the researcher’s dog Monty (an ever-present companion and guide on field trips) got spooked by a herd of llamas and went missing.
Reppucci walked for hours searching for both the collar and Monty. Eventually he reached a cliff edge and paused to catch his breath. “I was super tired, because I was super high” in the alpine zone.
As he gathered strength, out walked a female Andean cat from the foot of the cliff where he had been resting. “It was an amazing experience,” he remembers. “I saw the cat for like 40 minutes chasing vizcacha, just walking around, and she never saw me.” Monty, meanwhile, had made his way back to town. A very rewarding “weird” day all around!
Challenges of Studying the Andean Cat
The high mountain setting over which this cat roves makes it an incredibly challenging species to monitor and study.
The Andean Cat Alliance (Alianza Gato Andino in Spanish) field teams — mostly composed of AGA volunteers — spend a few weeks each year during spells of good weather setting up camera traps and searching for traces of the Andean cat. Their efforts occur at high altitudes up to 4,500 meters (14,763 feet) above sea level, where they battle strong winds, reduced oxygen levels, intense solar radiation and plunges in temperatures that can cause camera traps to fail or batteries to quickly go dead.
Andean cats boast one of the largest home ranges among small cat species, hunting across an area as large as 60 square kilometers (just over 23 square miles). They generally inhabit territory above 3,000 m (9,842 ft), though a population in the Patagonian Steppe lives at only around 650 m (2,100 ft).
“Most of the sites are remote,” notes Reppucci, with highly variable weather. “It can be very warm during the day, maybe 30° Celsius [86° Fahrenheit], and it can be well below zero [°C or 32°F], maybe 20° below zero [C or -4°F], during the night. So, it’s freezing.”
Threats Facing the Andean Cat
In 2024, researchers, led by Reppucci, updated the Andean cat’s IUCN Red List assessment. Its status didn’t change; it remains endangered. The threats facing it haven’t necessarily changed either, Reppucci says, but they have intensified.
Climate change is a growing danger, as the Andes change rapidly, with temperatures climbing and glaciers melting faster than in other regions of the world. For the Andean cat, that means its habitat is ever moving uphill, along with that of its prey. As these cold-clime animals retreat ever higher, their mountain range habitat shrinks — like a disappearing ocean archipelago with islands drowned by rising seas.
Ironically, efforts to combat climate change are also implicated among Andean cat threats, with intensifying demand for rare metals and minerals needed for the global energy transition bringing resource exploitation deep into the small cat’s alpine home.
Genetic Challenges and Conservation Efforts
When Reppucci and colleagues go into the field, scaling peaks and often spending weeks at high altitude, they set camera traps but also scour the land for Andean cat feces to obtain DNA samples. That’s no easy task as, unsurprisingly, the cat’s rarity means its poo is in scarce supply.
“Andean cats are 7-10 times less abundant than the Pampas cat,” Reppucci says. If you have a good eye, you can maybe collect around 50 feces in a day in some places, whereas other sites may leave you emptyhanded after a week of searching.
Packaged up poop is sent for DNA analysis to the lab of Constanza Napolitano, who heads up the genetics unit of AGA’s In the Field 24/7 program. This team has also sourced DNA from wildcats killed by cars and felid pelts held by local communities.
Crucial details have emerged from this work. A 2023 study found that the Andean cat has low genetic and genomic diversity, the lowest among the Leopardus genus (which includes at least eight species). The Andean cat has 10 times less diversity than the ocelot, for example.
Community-Based Conservation Strategies
Preserving an elusive and widely dispersed wildcat is challenging, particularly with stretched financial resources, as is almost always the case with small, noncharismatic felids. One low-budget conservation strategy embraced by Andean cat advocates is to focus on addressing localized threats by working very closely with communities.
One such activity run by the Andean Cat Alliance is CATCrafts, which trains local people to create handcrafts — usually cat-inspired — from leftover materials.
“We feel that by enabling local communities to find alternative, sustainable ways of life and activities, we are also helping achieve a healthier ecosystem,” says Lucherini, who heads up CATCrafts. “The artisans themselves, which are almost 95% women, start acting like ambassadors of Andean cat conservation when they talk to other people within their community.”
Lucherini notes that while conservation progress is slow, hope remains strong that by working with communities and empowering them, it will become harder for mining companies to gain a local foothold. In 2024, CATCrafts’ income-generating activities garnered $7,400 for families across five communities in Peru, Argentina and Chile.
Other activities address the potential disease threat posed by free-roaming dogs by offering vaccinations and neutering. When it comes down to it, saving a single cat can be vitally important, Reppucci says. “The [Andean cat] density is so low that if you kill one, you might lose the connection between two populations.”
