PUSSY NOT SUCH A CAT
Laser-like vision. Superpower hearing. And far larger than a domestic moggy. Just some of the killer facts about Britain’s wildcats being brought back from the edge of extinction ...
They have thicker coats than most domestic cats, and impressive black rings around a big, well-furred tail. They have excellent night vision and their acute hearing allows them to get a precise fix on any sound.
If a squirrel rustles uneasily in the branches of a tree, these animals will know its whereabouts to an inch, even if they can’t see through the thick foliage.
I am talking about wildcats. They are like a domestic cat with superpowers — as if your own beloved pet were to turn into Supercat.
yesterday, the BBC broadcast some enchanting footage of three wildcat kittens filmed by a hill walker in the Cairngorms. But such sightings are extremely rare.
Because, until recently, the Scottish wildcat has been a member of the living dead. That’s the grim term naturalists use for a creature that’s not yet extinct but does not have a long-term future. Now there is escalating support for a scheme to bring them back from the brink.
The wildcat population in Scotland has been estimated at around 35 (although some say the number is nearer 100) — so just a few animals that have been pushed back into the far north west. For such a tiny population there is no such thing as a small disaster: one ferocious winter, one virus, one change of policy in the way we manage our land could do for the lot of them.
But now there is a scheme to reintroduce wildcats into Britain — and it’s beginning to attract serious attention. The reintroduction would take place outside the current wildcat heartland: in the Galloway Forest, not far from the border with england. Should that happen, the cats would have every chance of moving south into the Kielder Forest in Northumberland and ennerdale in Cumbria.
That would mean wildcats back in england — and the last time a wildcat was recorded south of the border was 1849. After 170 years, there could be english wildcats once again. It would be the healing of an ancient harm and a demonstration that, sometimes, it really is possible to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
The Galloway scheme is proposed by an organisation called Wildcat haven. ‘Wildcats fit in perfectly, helping to control species like rabbits and actively avoiding humans,’ says the organisation’s Dr Paul O’Donoghue.
So where would the reintroduced cats come from? The wildcat in Scotland is the same species as the european wildcat, though it has been isolated here for 9,000 years. european wildcats can be found in Spain, Germany, Italy, across south eastern europe and Turkey onto the Caucasus.
The Wildcat haven plan is to release 15 animals — five each from Germany, Switzerland and Romania — to maximise the genetic diversity.
This is a scheme that was always going to provoke passionate support, as well as opposition. After all, we love cats, don’t we? Last year, Cats Protection, a charity for domestic animals, had an income of £63 million, which is enough to light up the cat’s green eyes in many wildlife charities.
WILDCATS are not just loveable, they are also mysterious, and have been living in British forests since time immemorial. how can our hearts not thrill to such an idea?
‘I am the cat who walks by himself and all places are alike to me,’ says the cat in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, and all cat-lovers feel a frisson at these words.
But these are not the hearth-rug snoozers of Britain, nor the half-tame bangers of cat-flaps, nor the feral cats — domestic moggies that live and breed in the wild — that haunt towns and suburbs and countryside.
They are real, authentic, full-on, uncompromising wild cats: cats that have hung on across the millennia in an increasingly hostile world. The idea of giving them a chance to dig themselves back into national life is extraordinarily attractive.
Wildcats were hammered by persecution in Victorian times, an era when any creature that might look at a pheasant or a partridge with a hint of hunger had to be slaughtered. Wildcats were killed with immense enthusiasm: they became extinct in england and desperately scarce in Scotland.
In truth, wildcats are not much threat to any game-birds. They don’t take many birds at all: rabbits, voles and squirrels are their main prey. It’s likely they would fit very snugly back into the ecosystem.
With predators there is always a simultaneous desire to stress their ferocity and to minimise it. There are people claiming that wildcats are harmless things that wouldn’t say boo to a pheasant: and at the same time revelling in the fact that they’re glamorous, impressive, ferocious — and truly wild.
We humans lose a little rationality when the conversation turns to predators. So what is the truth?
Wildcats tend to be around 25 per cent bigger than domestic cats, though some can be almost twice as big. Still, a human could pick one up with one hand.
They’ve been said to be behave with ferocity when backed into a corner — like any animal, it will defend itself when attacked — and in defence of young. They are fierce, too, in the sense that they’re carnivores who must kill to eat. But there’s no profit for them in turning their claws on larger creatures; and certainly they’ll run a mile from a human.
There have also been proposals to reintroduce the lynx into Britain. They have met the usual polarising response, some predicting disaster, others saying it’s just what we need. So let us note that the lynx is a different species from the wildcat: a lynx can stand up to 30 inches at the shoulder and they have been known to take down young deer. Don’t try to pick them up with one hand!
It follows that the idea of reintroducing much smaller wildcats is not restricted to fanatics. Michael Gove, Secretary of State for environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has been reported as being ‘open to the idea’. The Scottish Wildlife Trust is keen on improving the lot of the wildcats, but believes the current scheme needs more consultation.
Ben Goldsmith, millionaire environmentalist and non- executive member of the Defra board, has spoken up for wildcats: ‘A national project to rehabilitate our rarest predator is long overdue, and would doubtless have the backing of the British public,’ he said, adding: ‘We have a duty to put right the moral wrongs of the past.’ EVERY proposed reintroduction has at first excited horror and fury from some quarters: but when the trouble has died down, the returned creatures fit back comfortably enough into the environment.
That has been the case with otters, beavers, pine martins, white-tailed eagles, cranes, great bustards and red kites: and there is little doubt that a revitalised population of wildcats would fit in with modern British life.
Fit in? We’d be lucky ever to set eyes on one, even if they were back to their former numbers. What they like is the dead of night and the depths of forest, silence, darkness and as few humans in their lives as possible.
however, we would all be richer for knowing there were wildcats out there living their secret lives just as it says in the Just So Stories — in ‘the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees . . . waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone’.