The organisation's Academic Department director, Sumeth Kamolnoranart, yesterday said the agency had moved to help protect the rare cat after noticing its numbers dwindling dangerously.

For the past three years the organisation has worked with the Smithsonian, the Cincinnati Zoo and specialists to pioneer the fishing-cat breeding project.

The cat, (prionailurus viverrinus), is a medium-sized feline whose habitat fans out across Nepal, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Indochina and Indonesia.

It has a shorter face and legs and rounder ears than domestic cats, and its short fur is grey-brown with dark spots.

In Thailand, the cat is found around water in heavily wooded areas and is a protected species under the Wildlife Preservation and Conservation Act of 1992.

To start the breeding programme, fishing cats were gathered at Chon Buri's Khao Kheow Open Zoo for observation and reproduction research.

Semen samples were frozen and cats were artificially inseminated, said Sumeth.

Later today, the organisation will announce a major breakthrough - a successful embryo transfer.

The eggs were taken out of two female fishing cats, five-year-old Jampee and 11-year-old Duangkhae, and inseminated with the semen of a male from Dusit Zoo, Sumeth said.

The artificial insemination is a bid to ensure a higher survival rate for weak embryos, he said, and staff believe they'll manage successful transfers of about half of the embryos so far conceived.

Sumeth said this would ensure the future genetic storage of the species, in case male fishing

cats became extinct or so rare that breeding cycles were interrupted.

Janjira Pongrai

The Nation