Scottish Wildcat Association News Feed

April updates from the Scottish wildcats

admin@scottishwildcats.co.uk (SWA) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:30:57 GMT

Wildcat walkways
One of our key campaigns is to raise money that can help captive breeding centres build some of the best facilities in the world for the wildcats to live in; captivity is always an unhappy compromise and whilst it's an essential to make sure these wonderful cats stay with us, we definitely feel they should get the best possible care, and with many wildlife parks struggling just to meet the food bill every week outside help is essential. Last year Your Cat Magazine ran a summer fundraising campaign for us and the readers raised over £2000 for enclosure improvements at several wildlife parks, the first of which has just opened!

Port Lympne Wildlife Park in Kent have just added a 200ft aerial walkway to their wildcat enclosure using the donations from Your Cat readers, these walkways hugely expand enclosures giving the cats a favoured high viewpoint and creating better opportunities for park visitors to see them without the cats getting stressed. Since opening the walkways the wildcats have barely left them and are soaking up their wonderful new view over Kent's Romney Marshes; a full report with photos will be in a forthcoming edition of the magazine (probably the July edition), the walkways are about 10 feet in the air and wind through some trees as well as offering the amazing view. Visit Your Cat and the Port Lympne website

Stamps The new wildcat stamp was released this week and pulled a lot of press interest in Scotland and we're really pleased to see wildcats finally recognised on a UK wide basis, first day covers are still available through our website shop with 40% of profits getting donated to the Association.

Wildcat Haven Thanks to everyone who has been volunteering for our field conservation project, we're about to dive into a heavy week or two of meetings with all kinds of scientists and animal welfare groups to finalise details of the project and we'll be starting to book in volunteers from early May, so if you have emailed us, expect to hear some updates very soon and keep an eye out for the project website developing at www.wildcathaven.co.uk, the Scotsman also ran a nice piece on the project about a week ago you can check out here, expect regular updates as this, our big project to save the species, unfolds, several news outlets will be running regular updates and we'll also have regular video diaries popping up on the You Tube channel...

Cat shows We're still making the journey to cat shows all over Scotland and will be at the Short Haired Cat Club of Scotland show tomorrow (Short Haired Cat Club Website), then the Nor' East of Scotland Cat Club show in May (Nor' East Cat Club website) drop by and say hello if you're attending!

Coming soon Our sponsor a wildcat packs are almost ready, the member newsletter will be in members hands after the weekend and plans are afoot for another campaign to ban the use of snares in Scotland which kill hundreds of animals every year including many non-target species like wildcats, badgers, otters and pets, keep a look out for details...

Sponsor Dawn! Dawn McLeod has kindly volunteered to run the Castle of Mey 10k race in Caithness this May on behalf of the Association to help raise more funds, one of the UK's most northerly races it's a big challenge and we want to give Dawn as much support as possible; if you'd like to sponsor her efforts you can make online pledges through the Just Giving website here. Just Giving take care of all the money gathering and gift aid then send it on to us, so if you fancy doing a sponsored something for the wildcats as well have a look around the website, set your own page up and let us know about it! Go Dawn!!!

February updates from the Scottish wildcats

admin@scottishwildcats.co.uk (SWA) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:31:53 GMT

Hope this finds you all well and healthy and enjoying a new year of blizzards and snow fall! Rest assured our wildcat friends seem to be surviving the weather adequately although a few wildlife "feeders" have had surprise visitors this year stealing everything from meat scraps for foxes to bread and jam for pine martens, clearly they may not like human habitation much but will drop their standards a little when nothing else is available!

Wildcat Haven News
So far 2010 has been quite a flurry of activity behind the scenes in wildcat conservation land as our field conservation project Wildcat Haven moves ever closer. Kicking off in late summer in the West Highlands the project ties in the efforts of a number of conservation and welfare organisations hoping to create a large region in the Highlands full of wildcats and devoid of their many threats, so we're working with Cats Protection on large scale feral neutering and providing resources for researchers to carry out detailed surveys of the wildcats, and rather than rely on eye witness statements we're aiming to go for the most accurate method available collecting blood samples for genetic analysis.

The project will start around August in beautiful Ardnamurchan in Lochaber, where the wonderful people at the Highland Council have given us a mothballed primary school to act as our field camp and we'll be collecting together various teams of volunteers and experts to spread wildcat awareness, survey the wildcats in the region and neuter plenty of ferals. The information gathered in Ardnamurchan will then shape a plan to cover all of Lochaber in 2011 and from there we'll head north through the West Highlands until 2015...

We're still working hard bringing in grants to support the work and so far have had some wonderful support from a variety of organisations; The Summerlee Foundation in the USA has teamed up with Bosack Kruger in the USA to cover most of our feral cat costs and further grants have come in from the British Shuman Trust and Sir Cameron Mackintosh's Mackintosh Foundation, huge thanks to all of them and please keep your fingers crossed for more successful applications as we have a huge sum of money to raise!

A full website on the project will be set up very soon but in the meantime we're looking for volunteers to help us with the work; previous relevant experience is handy but not always essential, so if you fancy spending some time in a beautiful place living on camp food and helping catch ferals and wildcats do drop us a line at admin@scottishwildcats.co.uk and we'll send you some more details; please let any friends with veterinary or mountain leading skills know about it too!

Wildcat Stamps
Something for the philatelists! Royal Mail launch a British wildlife set of stamps in April including a wildcat one and the good people at Buckingham Covers have come up with a commemorative first day cover featuring a Peter Cairns photo and lots of SWA info. Peter has generously signed 500 of them as a limited edition earning us a donation, and all sales of the cover through our web shop will earn us a 40% commission, standard cover is £11.95, signed is £22.95, follow this link or find more info in our website shop! Don't forget the shop also includes stickers, member packs, DVDs, books and David Mayers gorgeous wildcat bronzes, all of which are raising awareness and raising money for wildcats.

Other ways to raise money
Raising money for wildcats can take many forms and you can help in all kinds of ways, such as using Everyclick for your web searches or check out our profile on Just Giving, they make it easy to arrange sponsored walks or collect money for the Association through your own website processing credit cards and so on on our behalf, so if you were considering a wildcat themed event check it out and see if they can provide an extra dimension to your money gathering, it's all free to use.

Cat Shows
Thanks to everyone who said hi at the recent West of Scotland Cat Club Show, we're next going to be at the Scottish Cat Club this Saturday and then the Short Haired Cat Club of Scotland on 17th April, drop by and say hello!

Happy Valentines everyone...

Christmas is nearly here!

admin@scottishwildcats.co.uk (SWA) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:08:25 GMT

West of Scotland Cat Club Show on Saturday 12th; can you help?
The West of Scotland Cat Club Show is on this Saturday at the John Wright Sports Centre in East Kilbride, they've kindly invited us along and we'll have a stall set up but we could really use a couple of extra volunteers to help out! If you think you could make it along even just for a few hours please drop us a line!

Christmas presents
The Scottish wildcat cause got a wonderful early present in the form of three funding grants for our Wildcat Haven project totalling almost £25,000! That's close to half what we need for the first year of the project and more applications are going out to round up the remainder, full details of our truly wonderful grant funders will be available early in the New Year when we'll also be officially announcing the project to the wider public!

Is there a Mountain Leader in the house?
Next year we begin our field conservation project Wildcat Haven and decided as part of our health and safety assessment that we need to get project manager Steve a Mountain Leader qualification so he can make sure our volunteers stay safe; he already has plenty of experience in the hills but needs to brush up some bits like rope skills and do the whole assessment process. So do we have any qualified assessors on the list who might be able to offer the charity a discount on a course? And are there any ML's out there who might be interested spending some time on the project themselves leading volunteers and scientists around the West Highlands? Drop us a line if you can help!

GCCF Supreme Cat Show
We did our first cat show last month and had a great time at the GCCF Supreme in Birmingham with the cat fancy showing lots of interest in how our wildcats are faring, a big thank you to everyone who became a member, joined the mailing list, bought things, donated funds and came along for Steve's talk on the day, we raised just under £700 and distributed thousands of leaflets so we're really looking forward to our next show at the West of Scotland Cat Club!

Sponsor a wildcat
Sadly just a bit too late for Christmas, but something good to spend your gift money on, we'll be offering a sponsor-a-wildcat program in the next few weeks, keep a look out for it we're just working out the details, and thaks to everyone who shopped with us over the last month or so, we've almost sold out of cards already (don't worry, we'll get some more!).

Mike Tomkies says hi
We recently met up with our charity patron Mike Tomkies to talk wildcats and he very kindly recorded a video clip talking a little about his wildcat experiences (available on the website soon) and urging everyone to keep working at saving them, he's also acting as an official advisor on the Wildcat Haven project sharing his unique practical knowledge of breeding and tracking wildcats with our scientific survey team. For any collectors of his books interested we also have a couple of copies of the new edition of Wildcat Haven signed by the man himself for £30, drop us a line if you'd like one!

International press
It's been a busy month or so for the rest of the world getting interested in wildcats; US magazine Wild Cat News has an article in the current issue, another US magazine called Scottish Life is running a big article on wildcats early next year, Japanese magazine Sotokoto has an issue coming up dedicated to UK wildlife and the wildcat is highlighted in detail and finally in Sweden a nature magazine has an article running soon as well, look out for them!

Send an online card and raise money for the SWA!
The Everyclick search engine, which donates money to us for every search carried out at Everyclick have launched a Christmas card system, so you can send your online friends online Christmas cards, and raise a little extra money for wildcats while you do it, all the info is here, even if you don't want to send a card, try the search engine, powered by Ask.com the results are good and it doesn't cost you anything to raise extra funds for the cause.

Last of the Scottish Wildcats screening in California
We just heard from Coffee Films that Last of the Scottish Wildcats will be having a rare public screening at the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema somewhere between 11-16 January, the festival includes some other really good looking documentaries on various environmental issues so if you're based in Cali consider checking it out, full details will be on the festival website soon.

Phew! That's about it from us this year, and next year we hope to get a lot more going on to save Scotland's wonderful wildcats. Thanks to all of you for your support, donations, help and e-mails throughout the year, starting a charity was new to us but it's been made a real pleasure by all the wonderful people and by the feeling that by this time next year we'll actually be making the difference out in the wild as well. Have the most wonderful festive season and New Year!

October updates from the Scottish Wildcats

admin@scottishwildcats.co.uk (SWA) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:33:49 GMT

We're rushing to get a few things together for the website shop over Christmas, look out for the Christmas cards appearing there very soon, remember the books and DVD are always available, plus we have exciting news of a beautiful new bronze sculpture from the wonderfully talented David Mayer.

This beautiful action piece is limited to just 15 castings at a cost of £390 each. A very fine table top piece this is a very low price for a limited bronze and David has continued his generosity to us promising us 25% of the price. You can contact David for orders via his website David Mayer Sculpture and full details of this bronze will be added to our website soon; don't forget to let David know we sent you!

Meanwhile David has been supporting another wildcat cause along with several other artists friends of ours; captive breeding program managers the Aspinall Foundation are holding a Scottish Wildcat Hootenanny on Saturday 7th November in Kent to raise money for their spectacular new 2500m2 open air wildcat enclosures. The evening includes a ball with live music and an auction for one of David's new bronzes, paintings, theatre tickets, DVDs and all sorts of other things. Tickets are £25, it'll be a fantastic night with the best possible cause and you can get more details from the event website; Scottish Wildcat Hootenanny

A new section to note on our website with info on all the other wildcat species in the world can now be found at others.html, thanks to Terry Whittaker, Neville Buck and Jim Sanderson for the photos.

Finally another quick thank you to the wonderful people at Your Cat magazine for dedicating a whole summer to raising money for the captive breeding program; new wildcat walkways are now being installed at Port Lympne and Wildwood in Kent and £1000 has also been raised towards a new open top enclosure at Camperdown in Dundee, a full report and photos will be in an upcoming issue of the magazine; www.yourcat.co.uk.

Come November we'll have our shop all up to date and in December we'll be letting you all know a bit more about our plans for 2010 including the big Wildcat Haven project; Keep spreading the word!

August updates

admin@scottishwildcats.co.uk (SWA) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:08:00 GMT

We've kicked off the month with the launch of yet more new web things with a Scottish Wildcat Association group appearing on Flickr we'd love to see your photos at, and also on the Everyclick search engine; a great idea, powered by Ask.com that donates money to the charity everytimg you do a web search, help us raise funds just by using the search at everyclick.com/scottishwildcats.

One for the diary if you live anywhere in the New York area, Amherst Museum in Amherst are running their annual Scottish Festival and Highland Games this August 15th and they'll be screening the film Last of the Scottish Wildcats throughout the day, a big thanks to the museum who have very kindly donated us advertising space in the program, and paid themselves for hundreds of our flyers to be printed in the US saving us the postage money! So big thanks to them and if you live in the area check the festival out, it gets over 5000 visitors every year and looks a lot of fun.

Finally, you may have noticed a couple of new shots here and there around the website and social networks and we'd like to say a big thank you to the photographers who let us use their work online, recent submissions have come from Terry Whittaker, Chris Wallace and Neville Buck, thanks to them all!

New wildcat social networks and other news!

admin@scottishwildcats.co.uk (SWA) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:08:14 GMT

The Scottish Wildcat Association is pleased to invite everyone along to our social networking profiles many of which have just been set up by our wonderful volunteers, drop by and be social at; Myspace, Bebo, Facebook and Twitter.

A quick shout out to our friends at the Wild Cat Conservation Legal Aid Society who have just launched their newsletter called Wild Cat Advocate, it includes a nice big article on the plans we've been working on with the Aspinall Foundation for improving the captive breeding program as well as a mountain of articles on other wild cat species, research and conservation efforts all over the world. It's a free download from their website so check it out this weekend; WCCLAS.

News also of a rare live screening of Last of the Scottish Wildcats planned Thursday 1st October at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, alongside the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, we're told it's free and open to all so if you're in the Midlands consider checking it out, the photography exhibition we can guarantee will be stunning if you've never seen the books.

Finally, Your Cat magazine's support of the SWA and captive breeding program continues, they're still running wildcat articles and after raising funds for two new wildcat walkways we're now putting the reader donations into a project at Camperdown wildlife park in Dundee. Camperdown is quite small and council owned so money is always tight but the staff are very enthusiastic to play their part in saving wildcats. They're currently investing in creating a new forest display area of the park and we and Your Cat are going to help them get a really nice big, modern and hopefully open top enclosure built within the forest; this will give their current wildcats a nice place to live and will also make it possible for the park to be much more involved in captive breeding for release in future, check out the magazine or the website at Your Cat.

Latest Scottish wildcat updates, looking for volunteers!

admin@scottishwildcats.co.uk (SWA) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:37:10 GMT

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!

Welcome

admin@scottishwildcats.co.uk (SWA) — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:41:59 GMT

Welcome to the Scottish Wildcat Association newsfeed, we'll be sending out regular short updates, snippets of news and key announcements several times a month so please subscribe and keep a look out for us!