The Scottish Wildcat
(felis sylvestris grampia)
Description | Conservation | History | Breeding program | Identification
Meet the neighbours

A number of issues threaten the wildcat in Scotland, below you can read about each of them and the work that's being done to overcome them.

Hybridisation

Domestic cats evolved directly from wildcats and the two species will readily breed and produce fertile offspring known as "hybrids". With an estimated 100,000 feral cats in Scotland inevitably the 400 wildcats are finding it tough to find a pure mate; over time the wildcat genes are diluting into the domestic genepool until we will only have feral cats left.

Allan Paul's work with the captive breeding program in the early part of this millenium has proved that domestic influence can be selectively bred out; the wildcat genes are stronger than domestic genes, so recently two captive cats classified in the studbook as "2"; fit for breeding but showing small signs of hybridisation, have produced the studbook's only "1"; a pure wildcat. Recent genetic research will help this process even further with scientists discovering the "domestic cat gene", so now any cat's blood can be tested to reveal what percentage, if any, is domestic.

Solving the hybridisation threat is our most complex and important challenge, and tantalisingly acheiveable. Primarily we need to raise awareness and make sure that everyone knows about the wildcat and how it is threatened by careless domestic cat ownership. All cat owners must be strongly encouraged to neuter and innoculate their cats; if they cannot breed or pass infections they pose no threat. Ideally domestic cats should be kept as house animals or at least kept in at night, this is most commonly when they mate and fight and also when they most commonly get killed on roads and present the greatest threat to our other indiginous wildlife like birds and small mammals.

Charity groups like Cats Protection and the SSPCA are doing fantastic work in rehoming feral cats and running subsidised neutering and innoculations programs for people on a low income, we hope to support that work by enhancing public awareness about the threat to wildcats, and the benefits of responsible cat ownership, neutering and innoculations such as increased life expectancy. Increased awareness is the ideal solution for the long term future of wildcats in Scotland.

Feline diseases

Many treatable feline diseases can still prove fatal untreated in the wild, and once again feral cats provide a way for these diseases to enter the wildcat population with disastrous effects; diseases passing from one cat to another until whole pockets of population are wiped out, passed around through matings or fighting when blood or saliva can easily be exchanged.

As detailed above, increased public awareness with regards to innoculations through organisations like vets, plus support of current feline charities is the only practical long term solution.

Human persecution

(Image right) Dead wildcat found in snare by Scottish hillwalker

Although killing a wildcat is a criminal offence, a remote area like the Highlands is hard to police and it still happens with alarming regularity, potentially as much as a quarter of the wildcat population is killed every year by shooting and trapping primarily on gaming estates but also some farms. A prey population controlled by poisons can also kill wildcats that eat the poisoned rabbits, rats or other small mammals and rodents.

Perhaps most avoidable is the killing of wildcats on sporting estates with game birds. Game birds generally make up a small portion of the wildcat diet, and even a national population of several thousand wildcats naturally distributes itself so that any financial losses should be manageable to a business like a sporting estate. The real issue for estates is also with feral cats which are an alien species, often exist in large colonies and really could make a serious impact on estate bird numbers.

Many estates that have expanded into eco tourism as well as traditional shooting are exercising restraint and suffering game bird losses in return for the increased attraction to photographers, filmmakers and wildlife watchers of having a resident wildcat. We hope that this will increasingly be a tactic employed in the future and hope to research how much wildcats can help gamekeepers and landowners keep domestic ferals off their land.

We would always support the concept of increased protection and especially a change in the law which punishes the landowner rather than the gamekeeper, but practical methods of enforcement need to come with it. We hope to engage with estates to embrace eco-tourism aspects to their business and help them find ways to make it more profitable to have a wildcat than to remove it. If a wildcat friendly estate continued to control feral and hybrid cats, it would by default become a pure-wildcat-only zone, ideal for rebuilding the population.

Roads

Sadly, one place you can always see wildlife in Scotland is dead at the side of the roads; quite often another avoidable threat. Careful driving is essential anyway on many of Scotland's small weaving roads and especially at night when all kinds of wildlife can leap out from nowhere at the side of the road; this is as much a consideration for your own safety, hitting something like a deer at speed is going to have an unwelcome effect on your vehicle and possibly it's occupants.

More considerate construction avoiding key habitats or the formation of wildlife corridors over or under roads are options too rarely explored on the grounds of cost; these benefit all wildlife in Scotland and should be seen as beneficial to the natural health of the land and therby an important percentage of tourism income. We also support the concept of "kill your speed" campaigns, designed for the health of people they nevertheless benefit wildlife as well.

Loss of habitat

There are plenty of places in Scotland where loss of natural habitat seems a ridiculous concern; although if you were to look at photographs of Aviemore just 20-30 years ago you may not find it so funny. Thoughtless development like the construction of huge suburban red brick housing estates to provide holiday homes utilised for just a few weeks of the year are destroying the very thing the house buyers want to live amongst. Development and tourism is essential to the Highland economy, but should never be at such a cost to it's natural resources.

Renewable energy developments such as wind farms also create many complex issues; whilst green, clean and free energy from the wind is an essential resource to develop for the good of humans and the environment, a poorly placed wind farm could have disastrous effects on a range of local wildlife. Some species will inevitably suffer, however we believe that strongholds and outposts of our rarest wildlife, such as wildcats, should be protected from such developments.

There are also issues with some forestry plantations; commercial forests of trees in tightly packed rows look nice from a distance, but walk into one and you can't miss the silence and lack of any green colours, apart from a few birds in the canopy nothing stirs. All wildlife requires natural forests, naturally spaced, with mixed age trees and some variety of species. You can spot a natural forest easily, if the floor is alive and green with grass, heather, ferns, bugs and small mammals, then you're in a natural forest.

Development must be more carefully considered to work alongside Scotland's nature rather than simply concrete over it, and to enhance people's enjoyment and understanding of nature rather than sanitise it for them. We look forward to working with a range of organisations and local people protecting the beautiful Highlands habitats.

Population fragmentation

An associated effect of habitat loss and road systems is population fragmentation. For example, the population of Scottish wildcats does not consist of one big group of 400 cats; it consists of several pockets of wildcats in small outposts around the Highlands, divided by man made features like major roads, trainlines and cities. A similar natural process, the forming of the English Channel, is the very thing that created the Scottish wildcat, however when fragmentation happens to such a small population it becomes impossible for the fragments to sustain themselves without substantial inbreeding or cross breeding with domestic cats creating a population of hybrid animals.

Once again more thoughtful development alongside good data and understanding of wildlife populations is the ideal solution, it is important to establish the costs of more "eco-friendly" development and give local residents the choice to suffer an increased cost for the good of their local wildlife.