First records of the flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps on the Kampar Peninsula, Sumatra, Indonesia
CHELA POWE L L and MUHAMMAD I QB AL
Abstract The flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps is one of the rarest small felids, with little known about its distri- bution, population status or habitat requirements, largely because of the few records of the species. We report here 11 detections of this Endangered species, recorded during 4 years of camera-trap surveys in a peat-swamp forest on the Kampar Peninsula, Riau province, Sumatra. These are the first records of this species on the Kampar Peninsula, in an area of c. 1,300 km2 of peat-swamp forest comprising four adjacent Ecosystem Restoration Concession licences. All records were near water bodies (mean distance 351 m) in lowland peat-swamp forest. These findings add to the ex- isting knowledge of the species’ distribution in Sumatra and confirm its presence in these peat-swamp forests. To inform species conservation management planning for the Kampar Peninsula, further research on this species is required.
Keywords Flat-headed cat, Indonesia, Kampar Peninsula, peat-swamp forest, Prionailurus planiceps, Restorasi Ekosistem Riau, small felid, Sumatra
O
f the small felids, the flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps, which occurs only in Borneo, Kalimantan,
Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, is one of the rarest. Little is known about its ecology and behaviour (Wilting et al., 2010, 2015; Wadey et al., 2016), apart from it having a strong link to semi-aquatic environments such as peat-swamp forests (Cheyne & Macdonald, 2011). Mod- elling the predicted distribution of the flat-headed cat has shown that most detections were at ,200 m altitude and within 5 km of large rivers and lakes (Wilting et al., 2010). This close association with water is reflected in unique anatomical adaptations such as a slight webbing between toes, a flattened skull, small ears and, for its size, large canine teeth, presumably to assist in the capture of aquatic prey such as fish and amphibians (Muul & Lim, 1970). The flat-headed cat is categorized as Endangered on the IUCN Red List (Wilting et al., 2015) because of habitat
CHELA POWELL (Corresponding author,
orcid.org/0000-0003-0968-8537)
Riau Ekosistem Restorasi, PT RAPP Town site 1, Rukon Akasia, Blok III, No. 1 Pangkalan Kerinci, Riau 28300, Indonesia. E-mail
cjrpowell@gmail.com
MUHAMMAD IQBAL Riau Ecosystem Restoration, Pangkalan Kerinci, Indonesia
Received 16 June 2020. Revision requested 24 September 2020. Accepted 22 January 2021. First published online 15 September 2021.
loss and fragmentation through degradation and land con- version, contamination of prey throughwater pollution, and overfishing. An additional threat is the drainage of peat- swamp forests by man-made canals, resulting in the loss of permanent water and increased hydraulic instability (Jeffers et al., 2019). Despite the proliferation of camera-trap surveys across
South-east Asia, there is a paucity of records of the flat- headed cat, particularly in Sumatra, with records more com- mon in Borneo (Wilting et al., 2016). The lack of informa- tion on the flat-headed cat may be a result of its rareness, the lack of species-specific studies, and/or the fact that lowland flood plains are under-represented in camera-trap studies (Wadey et al., 2016; Jeffers et al., 2019). Wadey et al. (2016) commented on the importance of making any records of the flat-headed cat publicly available, and Zanin et al. (2014) noted the species requires urgent research attention because of the risk of extinction. Lying between theMalacca Straights to the north and the
Kampar River to the south, the 7,200 km2 Kampar Peninsula is a coastal plain in Riau Province on the east coast of Sumatra, located within the larger Central Sumatran basin and part of the Sundaic region of South-east Asia. The Peninsula is dominated by peat-swamp forest thought to have formed within the past 8,000 years (Dommain et al., 2011). The central core of this landscape comprises 3,445 km2 of dense natural forest, with two peat domes, the western being larger than the eastern. Peat depth varies from none at the coastline to c. 15 m in the interior peat domes, which are the highest points in the study area. The Kampar Peninsula comprises various land uses, in-
cluding commercial fibre production (c. 2,260 km2) and oil palm plantations (c. 304 km2), located on the peripheral edges of the Peninsula. In the centre of the Peninsula natural forest areas comprise c. 409 km2 of protected forest and c. 1,301 km2 of Ecosystem Restoration Concessions, covering the peat domes, under the Restorasi Ekosistem Riau pro- gramme (Fig. 1). These Concessions are provided by the Indonesian government and designed specifically to restore the productivity of degraded forest, protect biodiversity and achieve ecosystem balance (Decree 159/Menhut-II/ 2004;Government Regulation (GR) No. 6/2007). This regu- lation provides an alternative to the conversion of forests to either timber or oil palm plantations, providing the op- portunity for companies to acquire a licence to manage degraded production forest land for protection, restoration
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2022, 56(4), 514–517 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321000132
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