Scotland's Cat; 400 and counting...

Far back in the history of Scotland clans formed together under the image of the wildcat and fought wars for the independence of the land. Today less than 400 Scottish wildcats remain in the wild and the extinction of Britain's last large mammal predator could come within the next decade.

Welcome to the home of the Scottish Wildcat Association, a new charitable organisation dedicated to protecting and conserving Britain's only remaining wild feline; the Scottish wildcat.

No angry tabby or feral the wildcat is a genuine wild species of cat; it was here long before we were and long before the domestic cat had even evolved! The Scottish wildcat is infamously the only wild animal to be completely untameable, even when captive reared; they may look a little like your pet cat but these are incredibly tough superpredators, sometimes called the Tiger of the Highlands.

Sadly, our wildcat is critically endangered with only 400 individuals remaining in the wild and barely a handful in the captive breeding population. We act as advocates for the wildcat to the general public and media, pushing public awareness and collecting donations to support captive breeding-for-release programs, scientific research and in-the-field conservation work.

We hope you will enjoy our website and the beautiful photography donated by a number of photographers and filmmakers sympathetic to the wildcat's cause, please support our campaigns, display our web banners and, if you enjoy social networks, come and be our friend on Myspace or join one of the many Facebook groups started up by our supporters!

Latest news and updates

2/6/2009; Latest updates, looking for volunteers!
After all the excitement of our launch it's been a pretty quiet couple of weeks of administrative matters here at the SWA, we've been expanding ways you can donate through things like Ebay and payroll giving, getting the hang of Gift Aid and getting the finishing touches put to the membership packs which will be dispatching sometime next week to those of you who are already signed up! Of course we've also been keeping things running with the Your Cat appeal to raise money for the captive breeding wildcats to get nicer enclosures, and further building our plans for a big in the field conservation project later this year, hopefully we'll be able to announce some details of that by the start of July.

Finally, we're also getting organised in terms of bringing together a dedicated team of volunteers to help really get the Association doing everything it possibly can to save wildcats; right now we have a few key positions we're keen to find people for and there's stuff for people outside the UK as well, so please drop by our volunteers page and let us know if you can get involved!

16/5/2009; Newsfeed
We just added a newsfeed facility which any of you with newsreaders can access and subscribe to by clicking the little feed icon above, we'll update it every time we add news here!

7/5/2009; Who cares?
Well we know our members and public supporters do because the donations and memberships have been flooding in; thank you so much to all of you for helping us off to such a great start. So who else cares? The wildcat has been lucky to attract the attention of some other charities, organisations, campaigns and companies who all want to play some part in the future of this animal; you'll find most of them linked up around this website and you'll also now find them all collected together on our new Friends and Supporters page. Want to see your company logo on there? Speak to us anytime about getting involved!

5/5/2009; Highland Tiger launches.
Some of you may have already seen that a new project called Highland Tiger has just launched focused on our favourite cat. The project represents the government/SNH response to the wildcat conservation issue, though it is being operated by a number of organisations including Cairngorms National Park, Wild Media, RZSS, the Gamekeepers Association and the newly appointed wildcat officer David Hetherington. We're overjoyed to finally see something coming out of SNH for the wildcat, and we know many of the people involved, especially David, have a very heavy commitment to saving the species. We're a little disappointed the remit of the team only extends to the Cairngorms National Park and immediate neigbourhood but please do give your support to the team especially if you're local and hopefully they can get a better commitment out of a still half-hearted government in future!

27/4/2009; Your Cat campaign off to a great start!
Our week has begun in a wonderful way, learning that barely 10 days after launching the Your Cat Scottish wildcat appeal has already reached it's target to raise £500 for installation of aerial tree walkways for the wildcats at Wildwood Park in Kent; thanks to everyone who has donated already and made it such an instant success!

The magazine are just as happy with the appeal and keeping it rolling so that we can raise funds to install another set of walkways at another wildlife park, getting us well on the way with our campaign to make Scottish wildcat breeding enclosures across the UK absolutely the best in the world for any captive species. You can get copies of the magazine at all good UK newsagents now for a great article with lots of stunning photos from Laurie Campbell and Peter Cairns, and don't miss the next issue out in mid-May which has some beautiful pictures from Keith Marshall and Ryan Ladbroke of little Macavity; the wildcat kitten born at Wildwood last year, definitely one for all you cute fans!

Please keep the support coming as we make every penny count and have some great news coming soon on both the captive breeding-for-release campaign and a new project!

27/2/2009; Buy wildcat stuff, save Scottish wildcats!
All the items in our shop have pledged donations to the Scottish Wildcat Association for every sale; you can find Mike Tomkies books, David Mayers beautiful wildcat bronze or the Coffee Films DVD available with lots of new products being added in the near future, you can see a trailer for the DVD below!