The IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group 2021-25

Membership with the IUCN Species Survival Commission, and hence of any of the Specialist Groups, expires every four years before the Word Conservation Congress. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the last WCC was postponed twice and finally hold in September 2021 in Marseille, France. The renewal of the Co-chairs and members of the Cat Specialist Group was delayed accordingly. We applied again to co-chair the Cat SG and were re-appointed by the SSC Steering Committee and started to reconstitute the group in fall 2021.The Cat SG presently includes 199 members from 56 countries. 39 of the members are new to the group, and a few applications are still pending. IUCN SSC has established a new online “Commission System”, which will, in the future,ease the reconstitution of the group. This time, it made the process rather more complicated. The system had some teething troubles, and the co-chairs and the members need to get used to the new device. And clearly, the new members here had an advantage over the long-term members who were used to just send an e-mail to the chair’s office and that was it. We are still waiting for the last (re-)invited members to register! But as we all know; herding cat conservationists is just like herding cats…

Nevertheless, we extend a warm welcome to all new and old members! We are looking forward to working with all of you to advance cat conservation during the next four years. New for the 21–25 term is also that the specialist groups had to enter a strategic plan for the quadrennium into the SSC data system. SSC works according to the 2021–2025 Species Strategic Plan that includes the components Network, Assess, Plan, Act,and Communicate (Fig. 1). The Specialist Group Co-chairs needed to explain in their outlook how they will contribute to the respective targets.We will discuss the Cat SG strategic plan with all members. We never have been and will never be able to organise a physical meeting for all Cat SG members. But if the pandemic had one positive effect then that we learnt how to use online conference tools. We are preparing a series of meetings first to introduce the CatSG to our new members, and then we will start organising regional meetings to be more regularly in touch with all our members.

Urs and Christine Breitenmoser