The Wildcat Data Gap
Missing knowledge matters.
Finding a cat is not the same as knowing how many remain.
Knowing a species
IdentityNamed
OccurrenceRecorded
Global abundanceUnknown
A detection answers “was it here?” It does not answer “how many are there?”
Conceptual evidence ladder; not measured coverage.A photograph answers one question.
A record can tell us a Bay Cat was present. Turning detections into an abundance estimate requires a suitable survey and explicit assumptions.
Read the Bay Cat storyWhy the distinction matters
Sparse records can reflect limited survey effort as well as elusive animals. Absence of a record does not by itself prove absence of the species. The Bay Cat story explains why a familiar numerical estimate is not presented as a global count.