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Celebrating five years of PICA Small Grant Programme

Posted 23 Apr 2025

Pallas's cat in the wild IMAGE: Vincent Munier

For the past 17 years, our wildlife conservation charity has managed the breeding programme for the elusive Pallas’s cat. In that time, RZSS also helped establish the global conservation project PICA (Pallas's cat International Conservation Alliance) alongside project partners Nordens Ark and Snow Leopard Trust. Building local capacity, supporting dedicated research, raising awareness, strategic planning and boosting international collaboration are all at the core of the project. 

Five years ago, as part of PICA, we launched the Small Grant Programme (SGP). Since launching, we have received 34 applications and awarded funding to 18 projects across nine countries – totalling €150,000.  

The SGP aims to support projects addressing urgent conservation needs of Pallas’s cats in the wild, which cover a variety of activities— from closing knowledge gaps about the species, to studying their ecology, behaviour, genetics and population dynamics, establishing long-term monitoring, threat mitigation, community outreach, to local capacity building and more .

Thanks to this conservation work, capacity across the Pallas’s cat’s range is growing, allowing for better protection of the species now and into the future.  

Pallas's cats in the wild IMAGE: Otgonbayar

Recently, we launched another round of the SGP, which will provide support to an additional four field projects in Mongolia, Kazakhstan and India and open collaborations with field practitioners from a range of local conservation organisations— Wildlife Institute of India, Snow Leopard Conservancy Trust India, Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan and Wildlife Science and Conservation Center of Mongolia.

There isn’t much known about the Pallas’s cat in India and Ladakh is becoming increasingly popular for eco-tourism with people trying to get glimpses of wildlife, so it’s an incredibly exciting time to be working with two projects in the country for the first time since the programme launched. 

This work wouldn’t be possible without the continued support of zoos around the world, with 18 collections having supported PICA and the SGP.  

Find out more about Pallas’s cat conservation