Overview

The Last Golden Cat: Revealing the Secret World of Africa's Most Elusive Predator-and the Science That Could Save It Deep in the dense, shadowed rainforests of Central and Western Africa lives a creature so rare that even the people who study wildlife for a living once doubted it existed. The African golden cat-known as Embaka to local communities-moves like a ghost through the undergrowth. It is the continent's most mysterious predator, a big cat almost never seen in the wild, more often discovered only when it has already been caught in a hunter's snare. Two decades ago, conservation biologists in Uganda, Gabon, and the Congo Basin had almost no data, no images, and no population estimates. The species remained a scientific blind spot. But for wildlife biologist Mwezi Mugerwa, a single grainy camera-trap video changed everything. What began as an unexplained silhouette soon grew into a groundbreaking international mission to save a species that could vanish before the world truly knows it. The Last Golden Cat takes readers inside this extraordinary journey-from Mugerwa's first bewildering sighting to the creation of the African Golden Cat Conservation Alliance (AGCCA), a network of 46 scientists spanning 19 countries. The book reveals how researchers built the largest camera-trap grid ever established for an African wildlife species, collecting millions of images that would have taken years to analyze-until artificial intelligence transformed everything. In captivating detail, this book uncovers how the nonprofit Panthera developed a revolutionary AI algorithm capable of identifying individual cats by their subtle coat patterns, much like fingerprints. For the first time in history, scientists could finally count the golden cat, revealing a sobering truth: even inside protected forests, the species survives at extremely low densities. In some regions, fewer than 16 cats roam across 100 square kilometers. Yet data tells only part of the story. The Last Golden Cat exposes the devastating human pressures driving the species toward extinction-especially the exploding bushmeat crisis. Though rarely hunted intentionally, the golden cat is frequently caught in snares set for antelope and pigs. In just three Ugandan forests, over 80 cats were documented in traps within a single year-88% by accident. Faced with this growing crisis, Mugerwa turned to the people who know the forest best. The book shares the powerful rise of Embaka, the first community-based anti-poaching initiative dedicated to the species. Across Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, and Angola, more than 8,000 families-many former hunters themselves-now serve as the golden cat's protectors. Together, communities deploy camera traps, report sightings, offer ecological insights, and help map previously unknown habitats. Through gripping narrative storytelling and deeply reported scientific insight, The Last Golden Cat explores: The near-invisibility of the African golden cat and why its behavior makes it so difficult to study How AI and camera-trap technology are rewriting what we know about Africa's forests The global bushmeat crisis threatening dozens of species How communities, incentives, and former poachers are reshaping conservation The emotional, dangerous, and inspiring work of biologists on the frontlines The urgent race to produce the first-ever population census of this elusive animal Order a copy now!

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