Famous for its beautiful spotted coat, the ocelot ranges throughout Latin America, even stretching as far north as Texas. The southern Brazilian subspecies, Leopardus pardalis mitis, inhabits the tropical and subtropical forests of southern Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.

An excellent hunter, the ocelot primarily hunts small rodents and also will take small deer, armadillos, reptiles and other small animals. Though it can climb trees and even swim well, the ocelot spends most of its time hunting on the ground, as long as the habitat provides thick plant cover and abundant prey. Decorated with dark splotches and stripes, its golden coat camouflages with the foliage and hides the hunter from its prey. Like most other small cats, the ocelot is a nocturnal hunter. With whiskers, large ears and eyesight six times better than a human’s, the ocelot has no trouble tracking down prey as it patrols the forest floor at night.

Historically, ocelot populations were decimated by the fur trade. Today, most hunting has been curbed and what hunting does exist is illegal poaching. However, populations have been slow to recover due to a naturally slow reproductive rate as compared with other cat species of similar size. Adding to that already low population size, the threat of continued habitat loss and fragmentation poses a major obstacle to ocelot survival. Habitat with suitable cover and prey is becoming scarce as the human population grows and it is converted into farmlands. Development and building take up space and increase the demand for wood, thereby escalating logging in forests. More roads are built, cutting the habitat into smaller pieces or fragments. What remains of the wild landscape are merely islands of habitat, disconnected dots of green on a map.

Towards Holistic Conservation
One goal of SSPs is to develop holistic conservation programs for their species, incorporating captive breeding of a representative ‘insurance’ population, effective education and research efforts, and preservation of wild populations and their habitats. The Brazilian Ocelot Consortium (BOC), a partnership involving the Ocelot SSP, ten U.S. zoos (including the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden) and a Brazilian non-governmental conservation organization, the Associação Mata Ciliar, is a model example of this type of program. Funding from the BOC is being used in Brazil to provide professional training to Brazilian colleagues, improve captive breeding of Brazilian ocelots, educate the local populace about ocelots and restore degraded ocelot habitat adjacent to a large nature reserve. Since the start of reforestation efforts in 2003, nearly 50,000 native trees have been planted in the BOC habitat restoration area. As one other component of the BOC, we also are establishing a Brazilian ocelot population in AZA-accredited institutions to cooperatively manage in combination with the captive ocelots maintained in Brazilian zoos.