Pampas Cat Complex (Leopardus colocola)

The Pampas Cats comprise five of the thirteen wild cats in the Leopardus family of cats. The small spotted cats of the Leopardus family are distributed throughout Central and South America.

The Pampas Cat (Leopardus colocola) was recently split into 5 species (L. braccatus, L. colocola, L. garleppi, L. fasciatus and L. pajeros). This is due to a reclassification of subspecies into distinct species and not due to any discovery of new wild cat species.

The adaptable Pampas Cats occur in a variety of habitats and at all altitudes across South America. They can often be confused with the other small spotted cats of the Leopardus genus as its coat can be patterned, however there is a plain coat variety that is unique to Pampas Cats.

In the past Pampas Cats were hunted extensively for the fur trade and nowadays, due to human expansion, loss of habitat is the primary threat to their continued survival.

Pampas Cats in the News

2026 Conservation News

Conservation in southern Ecuador is changing the story of the Northern pampas cat

By Luis Arturo Román, Ecuador, Northern Pampas Cat Project

June 2026

Article and image re-published with permission from Jim Sanderson, SWCCF.

When we launched the Northern Pampas Cat Project in the dry forests of southwestern Ecuador, the published scientific literature contained fewer than five records of Pampas cat (Leopardus garleppi) in the south of the country.  That number alone told us that something was seriously wrong, not with the cat itself, but with academic interests in southwestern Ecuador..

Moreover, most people in the communities surrounding the tropical dry forest of southwestern Ecuador had never heard the name of the Pampas cat.  A few knew it as Sachamis, a Quechua word, where sacha means bush and mishi means cat:  The Bush cat.  It's a name that reflects the cultural memory of the cat that some rural inhabitants still hold, but it has no conservation status, no legal protection, and no emergency number to call.  Some had seen it cross a road at night.  Others had lost a chicken to one and had no reason to feel affection for it.  What most communities lacked was not knowledge of the animal's existence, but a framework for understanding why the Pampas cat was important and what its disappearance would mean.

Four community workshops began to build that framework.  Working with farming families, local conservation allies, and community members across the project area, we brought the Northern Pampas Cat into the places where people actually gather: fields, community halls, and a nature vacation camp for children.  The workshops covered every documented threat the species faces: roads, irrigation canals that function as traps, free-roaming dogs in the agricultural fringe, and the illegal trade that begins when a wild animal is taken from the forest and ends when nobody reports it.  In each case, participants left knowing not just that the cat exists, but what threatens it and what they can do.

A memorable moment occurred during a workshop at the Jorupe Reserve in a session organized with children from the city of Macará.  Some of them were meeting a wildlife conservation team for the first time, when we were preparing a photo the most enthusiastic child took a replica of a traffic sign from the table and spontaneously raised it above his head, encouraging the other children to chant the name of the pampas cat.  The sign, translated from Spanish, read: REDUCE THE VELOCITY—WILD CAT HABITAT.  That image is powerful; members of the next generation of drivers in this region know why it's important to drive #slowforwildlife.

The workshops also opened conversations we had not anticipated.  Participants raised their own concerns about wildlife they had seen harmed, asked where to report encounters, and questioned what could be done about dogs, canals, and trade routes.  Those conversations are now the planning for the next phases of the project: community-based dog management initiatives, infrastructure interventions in agricultural canal systems, Chicken coops safe from predation and awareness programs at formal border control points.

In the dry forest of southwestern Ecuador, that process has begun.

Visit the Northern Pampas Cat Project

Small Wild Cats Audio - Coat Color

Listen to a short audio taken from a chapter in the book Small Wild Cats by well-known small cat conservationist Jim (James) Sanderson. Jim has been instrumental in forming the Pampas Cat Working Group as well as six other small cat working groups in the Neotropics.

This excerpt covers how small wild cats like the Pampas Cats get their coat color and what causes black coats.