The first time Mwezi Mugerwa saw the African golden cat, he didn’t know what it was.
While reviewing camera trap footage at Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park, the conservation biologist spotted an unfamiliar creature around twice the size of a domestic cat in the grainy black-and-white footage.
None of his colleagues could identify it; “but, when I talked to the hunters and communities who lived around the park, they knew the species,” Mugerwa recalls.
Known as Embaka in the local language, the “cryptic” golden cat was often caught accidentally in forest snares.
“That was really concerning for me — that we may lose this species before we even get to know about it,” says Mugerwa.
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