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Thursday, 13 January 2011

Serval Population Graph

There is no such thing as a serval population graph because we don't know the world population of the serval. We don't know a lot about the wildcats generally, in fact.

That might surprise people looking for information about serval population but I can assure you that it is true - sorry.



If you are a student looking for a serval population graph for your course work tell your teacher that it doesn't exist.

The best authorities come up blank when discussing serval population:
  1. Wild Cats Of The World by Mel and Fiona Sunquist, unquestionably the best book on wildcats in the world does not quote any figures. They say that "servals have declined in numbers". This is pretty much the story for all wildcats. 
  2. The IUCN Red List, another excellent resource that should be able to tell us about wild cat populations because that is their main business  - monitoring populations - cannot come up with a serval population. They simply say that the serval "occurs widely" on the African continent below the Sahara desert except for rainforest. That is pretty much it.
  3. Then good old Wikipedia simply does not even refer to serval numbers but recites what the Red List says more or less.
Well that is it. The serval is not the only wildcat for which we have no accurate data on population. We don't even know for sure what the population of the tiger is! We have a decent idea (about 3,000+) but estimates in the past have been overly optimistic - unsurprisingly because politicians in India don't want to admit to failure in protecting the tiger from poachers.

See Serval for lots more.

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