A fishing cat rescued in northern Bangladesh in a severely injured and malnourished condition has been returned to the wild after months of rehabilitation, with conservationists fitting the animal with a satellite-tracking collar to monitor its movements.
The male fishing cat was released into Ooterbhag and Indanugger Tea Estate, which borders a large freshwater wetland in northeastern Bangladesh, after spending more than eight weeks in a soft-release enclosure to prepare for life in the wild.
The Bangladesh Forest Department rescued the animal in February 2026 and transferred it to the Jankichara Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, run by the conservation nonprofit Creative Conservation Alliance (CCA).
The cat’s chances of survival were initially slim, according to Caesar Rahman, CEO of the CCA. Its jaw was dislocated, most likely after being beaten by people, leaving it unable to feed itself. It was severely malnourished and weighed barely 5kg.
“We had very little hope that he would survive,” Rahman told Mongabay by email.
After weeks of assisted tube feeding and veterinary treatment, the cat’s condition improved, and its weight eventually reached 12kg.
Rahman said many rescued animals do not receive proper rehabilitation and either die in care or are released without a structured process, leaving their fate unknown.
However, Muntasir Akash, an assistant professor of zoology at the University of Dhaka who was not involved in the rescue, said the effort was better described as a conflict translocation than rewilding.
Although rehabilitation helped the cat regain its physical fitness, Akash said, it did little to develop the spatial memory needed to survive independently in the wild. Nevertheless, he described the effort as another milestone in spatial ecology research in Bangladesh.
Fishing cats (Prionailurus viverrinus) are among the larger species of small wildcats. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), their global wild population may number as many as 7,500.
The species is found mainly in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, with around 95% of its range lying outside protected areas. It also occurs in Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Thailand, while it is believed to be locally extinct in Indonesia and Vietnam.
The species faces significant threats in Bangladesh. A study previously reported by Mongabay found that 31% of media reports about fishing cats between 2005 and 2021 concerned their deaths. Nearly half of those deaths involved fish and duck farmers killing the animals on sight.
Rahman expressed hope that the CCA’s rehabilitation approach and partnerships with tea plantations could provide a model for future conservation initiatives.
“There are at least 135 tea estates in the northeastern part of Bangladesh,” he said, adding that the approach could become a useful conservation model in the country’s densely populated landscape, although it was still too early to assess its long-term effectiveness.