Originally published 2019-04-11.
The Formosan clouded leopard, Taiwan's only native big cat, is still officially extinct. In early 2019, Paiwan rangers from Alangyi Village in Taitung County reported two separate sightings of what they believed was a clouded leopard, and the news travelled around the world. But no photograph, footage, hair, droppings or other physical evidence was produced, and the IUCN's 2021 assessment still listed the Taiwanese population as extinct.
The reports still matter. They tell us something about how extinct species are declared, how hard elusive cats are to find, and how much the leopard means to Taiwan's indigenous peoples. Here is what was reported, what the evidence shows, and why the question is not quite closed.
What the rangers reported
Alangyi is a Paiwan village in Daren Township, on the southeastern coast of Taiwan. In mid-2018 the community set up its own ranger team to patrol its traditional territory, guarding against outside hunters and logging. According to Taiwan News, which carried a report from the Central News Agency in February 2019, two groups of rangers described separate encounters.
In the first, an animal climbed a tree and then scrambled up a cliff, apparently to hunt goats. In the second, a cat dashed past a ranger's scooter, went up a tree and vanished. The village chairman did not reveal the exact time or place, to protect the animal if it was there.
The Paiwan name for the clouded leopard is Li'uljaw, and the community took the reports seriously. A tribal meeting banned outsiders from hunting in the area, and elders asked the Forestry Bureau to stop logging and other disturbance. Local leaders also approved fundraising to support the patrols.
How officials and scientists responded
The Forestry Bureau's Taitung office called the news very important and said it would work with the tribe to investigate. Its deputy director said eyewitness accounts had to be respected but also checked scientifically.
Liu Chiung-hsi, an ecologist at National Taitung University, offered context. The cat's secretive habits make it very hard to catch or photograph, he said, so a lack of recent records is not surprising. He also recalled that hunters he interviewed in 1998 admitted to having caught clouded leopards and burned the bodies, fearing prosecution under Taiwan's wildlife law.
Despite that interest, no confirmed evidence followed. That is the key difference between a sighting report and a rediscovery. A rediscovery needs something others can examine: a clear camera-trap image, a DNA sample, a carcass or a skin.
The long search that came before
Clouded leopards are medium-sized cats with huge canine teeth for their size, short legs and long tails, and they are superb climbers. Their coats carry large, dark-edged blotches that look like clouds. In Taiwan they once lived in forested mountains across the island.
The last widely cited sighting by local hunters dates to 1983, based on a survey of 70 indigenous hunters in the 1980s. The last confirmed physical record is the skin of a young animal found in Taroko National Park in 1989. In the 1990s some tracks near Yushan National Park raised hopes, but they were never confirmed.
Then came one of the biggest wildlife camera surveys of its time. Between 1997 and 2012, researchers set camera traps at more than 1,450 sites, from the coast to nearly 3,800 metres up. A nationwide effort logged over 128,000 camera-trap days and recorded a dozen potential prey species, but no clouded leopards. A team of Taiwanese and US scientists published the results in the journal Oryx in 2015 and concluded that the cat had been extirpated from Taiwan. News reports in 2013 had already described it as extinct.
Subspecies or simply clouded leopards?
The Formosan clouded leopard was first described in 1862 by the British naturalist Robert Swinhoe from a traded skin with a short tail. For a long time it was treated as a separate subspecies, Neofelis nebulosa brachyurus. Genetic study of hair samples later found it was not distinct from the mainland clouded leopard, so it is no longer recognised as its own subspecies.
That matters for the future. If the Taiwanese cats were simply clouded leopards, then animals from the Asian mainland could, in principle, be used to bring the species back. The 2015 Oryx paper raised that very question. Reintroduction would need large, protected forests, enough prey and strong local support, and none of those is simple.
Why the leopard matters to Paiwan and Rukai people
For several of Taiwan's indigenous peoples, the clouded leopard is more than an animal. Rukai tradition holds that their ancestors followed a clouded leopard to their homeland, and hunting it is taboo. Among the Paiwan, clouded leopard skins were associated with nobility. Both peoples share stories that link the leopard with the Formosan black bear.
Historical records also show the leopard in trade: indigenous hunters sold pelts in port towns such as Tainan. According to Taiwan News, the Japanese anthropologist Torii Ryūzō, who worked in Taiwan around 1900, is the only outsider known to have seen a live Formosan clouded leopard.
This cultural weight explains why a village would set up patrols and close its land to hunters on the strength of a sighting. Whether or not the cat survives, the response protects forest that many other species depend on.
Could it still be out there?
Rediscoveries do happen. Animals listed as extinct, or not seen for decades, are occasionally found again, especially small or secretive species in remote terrain. But a large predator needs a lot of space and a breeding population to survive for decades. Fifteen years of systematic camera trapping across Taiwan's mountains without a single image makes a surviving population unlikely, though not strictly impossible.
Unconfirmed sightings of rare cats are common worldwide, and many turn out to be other animals glimpsed briefly. In Taiwan, the leopard cat and the masked palm civet are climbers that could be mistaken for a clouded leopard in poor light. That is not a dismissal of the rangers; it is why scientists ask for evidence.
What the story teaches about extinction
Biologists widely warn that species are now disappearing much faster than the natural background rate. The Center for Biological Diversity, for example, puts the current rate at 1,000 to 10,000 times higher; other estimates vary, but almost all point the same way. Large forest predators like the clouded leopard are among the first to vanish when forests are cut and they are hunted for skins.
The Alangyi reports are a reminder that local communities often know their land best, and that their eyes and ears can guide surveys. For now, the honest summary is this: the Formosan clouded leopard remains listed as extinct, the 2019 sightings were never confirmed, and the forests where it once lived are worth protecting either way.
Sources: Taiwan News: reported clouded leopard sightings in Taitung (February 2019); Wikipedia: Formosan clouded leopard; Center for Biological Diversity: the extinction crisis.
COMMENTS