KINGSVILLE, Tx — Imagine watching cats in the wild for a living. Now imagine using what you’ve learned and using it for research to save an endangered species. That’s exactly what experts at Texas A&M University -Kingsville’s (TAMUK) Caesar Kleberg Wildlife research Institute has worked on for years.
Ocelots were once easier to find throughout parts of South Texas, East Texas, Louisiana and even Arkansas. But throughout the last 40 years, ocelots have become scarce.
“Just in the very southern tip of Texas is the only place where there’s ocelots,” Executive Director of Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute Dr. David Hewitt said.
The university and its partners will start building an ocelot conservation facility next month in hopes of growing the population. But they aren’t going to take ocelots from existing populations.
“They can take semen from wild trapped ocelots and use them with ocelots from zoos to make kittens that have genetics from Texas ocelots,” Dr.Hewitt said.
The docile kittens will then be trained to hunt and grow up by their mothers They will be released after about a year when they are teenagers.
“We’ll make sure they’re doing well in their native area then open up those gates and let them slowly move out and figure out where they’re going to live out there,” Dr. Hewitt said.
But the work behind the scenes to get to the point of groundbreaking on the facility was just as important as the special day.
“The amount of hours and time it takes to capture what you need to capture and study it and do something meaningful with that information,” President of TAMUK Dr. Robert Vela said.
The university hopes to hire more graduate assistants to help out at the facility, inspiring current and future students to reach a common goal.
“Kids want to be inspired. They want to validate in their minds that this is the right field for me to be in. That’s the beauty. You don’t have to go anywhere to do state-of-the-art research. It’s right here in our backyard. And I think our students are going to be inspired to stay and give back to our community,” Dr. Vela said.
Construction on the facility will begin next month and the facility hopes to begin taking in ocelots in December of 2025.
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