Wildcat Survival and the need to Protect and Maintain An Environmental Balance

 I mention the Scottish Wild Cat Haven and its enclosure but what is more important is what their stance is regarding the shooting, snaring and even poisoning by landowners and farmers of feral cats to "keep the wildcat pure".

Between 1977-2013 (and on and off since) I was a wildlife consultant to UK police forces abd regularly spoke to land owners, game keepers and farmers from all around the UK but what I heard back from some in Scotland concerned me. I was being told that feral and wild cats were seen as "vermin" or "pests" (same thing). People were quite open in telling me that both were shot on site or that they were snared.

Firstly, I was in the position that I could do nothing much. I reported back to PWO (Police Wildlife Officers) who could only note what I was saying because, without solid evidence, it was "your word against theirs" and they were not going to say to police that they used poison. Shooting and snaring on private land is also not illegal. I came across several incidents over the years in which animals or birds that were supposedly protected by law, were killed. "Oh, that's on private land" I was told. End of story.

Just as these people told me about the number of red squirrels they had killed or how they had "disposed of" reintroduced birds of prey so the police kept informing me that private land was private land.

You might assume that with complaints of so many wild rabbits running around a wild or feral (feral is just a former domestic cat living wild) cat would be welcome -they kill and eat rabbits...and rats and mice. Despite all of the laws the practice that has gone on for centuries continues -the 'fun' and 'joy' of killing a specific animal -including buzzards and hawks that kill the rabbits, mice and rats. 

We know that Di Francis in her "ill judged" Kellas cat quest -to prove that it was a formerly unknown British cat species- paid for any such cat killed. Her incompetence at breeding these cats led to their suffering and death until she was "advised" (you could not tell her anything) that feeding a "natural diet" like they would get in the wild might help. It did.  However, when I spoke to her by phone in the late 1990s I was told that she had up to 20 dead Kellas cats in her freezers -all evidence of the new species. We know that the "Kellas" cat is a feral-wildcat hybrid -that is evolution not a reason to carry on killing a species. 

Read the books by the great and good naturalists and zoologists and they explain all of this (turning a convenient blind eye when they should be very vocal); if a species is under stress, hunted and they are few in number then they will breed with the most convenient and compatible species. A female wild cat will mate with a feral if there are no male wild cats and vice versa. Again: that is evolution.

We like to think that our knowledge of wild cats in the UK is complete and you will read:

Now confined to the Scottish highlands, wild cats disappeared from southern England in the 16th century, with the last one recorded in northern England being shot in 1849. ... The Wildlife and Countryside Act gives strict legal protection to wild cats and their dens.

But the truth is that wild cats in England and even the Welsh border area were still known in the 1930s and these were not releases but still existing at that time but under threat -even well klnown and respected zoologiosts wrote about this.

In 2019 it was reported that there were plans to reintroduce the wild cat (Felis silvestris) back into England. It cannot be possible, if any research had been done what-so-ever by those involved, that they were unaware that this had already happened. As I noted in my Wildcats and Ferals paper (2000) while looking at large non native cat reports I was contacted by a couple who saw a pair of large cats in their garden (location confidential) and as they described what they saw I was puzzled. Eventually it was established that what they had observed were two F silvestris.

Then another report from a different location. I then heard from a forester on the English-Welsh borders. Suddenly, other reports were beginning to make sense. I contacted the Wildcat Survival Trust and was told that they knew a group had been releasing pairs of wild cats around England to try to reintroduce them. No idea who the group was but this was all taking place throughout the 1990s. I welcome an official reintroduction but only if protection is strictly enforced including on private property. Tagging and tracking may help to a degree.

As it happens I was wondering why I had not heard more of these cats pover recent years though people have reported "BIG tabby cats with striped/ringed tails" and thanks to Hayley de Ronde of Black Foxes UK I heard of a recent sighting in Northern England (location confidential) and have been in contact with the observer who is keeping his eyes open from now on.

Rather as the non stop killing of foxes and their cubs -snaring, poisoning, shooting and live cubs thrown to fox hounds to "give them a taste of their prey" it is barbaric and totally out of keeping with the natural balance of the eco system. Prey -rabbits, mice, rats etc require Predators -foxes, badgers (another protected species killed at whim officially) and wild/feral cats. The Prey-Predator balance is no longer in sync.

Protect and help existing populations of Felis silvestris is welcome but not at the cost of killing every feral cat seen which are filling a niche. We also need to make sure that protecyted species are protected without the "its private land" gety-out-of-gaol clause. And let's not forget that many pets are also injured and killed because of these actions.