Japan's Iriomote Cat Closer to Extinction

This month Japan's Ministry of the Environment reclassified the Iriomote cat as "critically endangered" on the government's Red List of threatened species. The wildcat is found only on Iriomote Jima, a tiny, tropical, mountainous island on the southern end of the Ryukyu archipelago, which stretches from Japan to Taiwan. The Iriomote cat has been considered at-risk since it was discovered in 1967, and surveys in 1985 and 1994 estimated that only about a hundred animals remain. Now a three-year survey, still in progress, is providing evidence that the cat's already small population is shrinking, researchers say, most likely due to habitat loss and road-kill deaths.