The secretive mammals are fast disappearing from the Highlands but last-ditch efforts to save them are fraught with challenges

Set deep in mixed woodland of Scots pine and birch, near the banks of the river Beauly in Inverness-shire, several huge, concealed pens contain two breeding pairs of Scottish wildcat.

Wildcats mate from January to March, and their high, anguished breeding calls through the dark winter nights are thought to have inspired tales of the Cat Sith, a spectral feline of Celtic legend that was believed to haunt the Highlands.

“It is a cry that carries over quite a distance and it is spine-chilling if you hear it in the middle of the night,” says Sir John Lister-Kaye, renowned nature writer and director of the Aigas Field Centre. The former Victorian sporting estate, which now offers conservation holidays and environmental education, is one of 20 sites currently participating in a conservation breeding programme led by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS).

“I’m sure that if there were other wildcats nearby they would have been attracted to the calls. But since we started in 2011 we’ve had foxes, pine martins, badgers, one or two domestic cats come and have a look – but not a single wildcat anywhere near.”

The Scottish wildcat is now one of the most critically endangered wild mammals native to the UK, according to a comprehensive analysis by the Mammal Society released earlier this week, which estimated the population at 200 but accepts that the figure may be significantly lower.



“I think it’s desperate,” says Lister-Kaye, who believes the population in the wild may have dwindled to the low tens. “We’re at the last possible moment to try and recover this species from extinction.”

He is currently awaiting the birth of more wildcat kittens – the pairs have successfully produced six live offspring since they were homed at Aigas, while a further 71 live in captive breeding programmes around the UK, coordinated from the RZSS Highland Wildlife Park near Aviemore.

Wildcats may look distinctive with their muscular bodies, flat faces and thick, blunt tails, but they are are notoriously difficult to monitor, as Roo Campbell of Scottish Wildcat Action (SWA) explains: “They are so secretive. They are one of a few mammals that have proper cryptic camouflage, this brown, buff and black striping that breaks up their outline. They can really hide themselves and move around without being seen.”

Based 10 miles to the east of Aigas, in Inverness, SWA was set up by the Scottish government agency Scottish Natural Heritage in 2015 to implement a five-year national conservation plan to restore a viable population of wildcats north of the Highland fault line.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Camera trap photo believed to be of a Scottish wildcat wearing a collar for tracking. Many wildcats have bred with a feral or domestic cats so could be hybrids. Photograph: Scottish Wildcat Action

Tracking difficulties are compounded by the problem of reliably distinguishing between a wildcat and a hybridised cat, the result of a wildcat breeding with a feral or domestic cat. While the SWA will pay for farm or domestic cats living near suspected wildcat habitat to be neutered, as well as vaccinating feral cats in order to curb exposure to feline diseases, most specialists accept that all wildcats in Scotland exhibit a degree of hybridisation.

“We then have to find a line in the sand,” explains David Barclay, who manages the RZSS breeding programme, “a point at which a cat is so hybridised that is has no conservation value because it is so far removed from a wildcat genetically.”

Barclay and his team have developed their own bespoke genetic test, with a cut-off point of 75%, which has revealed that the remaining captive wildcats across the UK enjoy a much higher species purity than those tested in the wild.

Although some vocal critics argue it is better to leave the few remaining pockets in the wild to breed in isolation, the majority of those working in wildcat conservation are convinced that hope rests with captive breeding, then rewilding.



Barclay is blunt about the reality of the situation. “Of course we want to conserve the population in the wild, and that should be the priority, but when you have such a bad population in the wild, bordering on extinction, it doesn’t matter what you do – neuter feral cats, remove all the threats – unless you add more animals.”

Nor is species recovery and re-introduction a speedy process, he adds, and is dependent on committed individuals accepting that their efforts in the wild have been in vain. “When the data is indicating that the likelihood is there is no viable species, the danger is that you don’t act because you think it might be controversial. We’ve got to be careful that we don’t get into a situation where we are researching the animal to death, or focusing on just one photograph that gets a lot of publicity because it might be a wildcat.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A wildcat or hybrid caught by a camera trap. Loss of habitat has caused wild populations to plummet. Photograph: Scottish Wildcat Action

Lister-Kaye concurs that “only way forward is to capture-breed from high quality hybrids, and by selective breeding over several generations increase the population.”

But that is only half the story, he cautions. “The reason that Scottish wildcats have declined so dramatically is loss of habitat, to commercial forestry, industrial agriculture and urbanisation. So finding areas where there are the right prey species in sufficient numbers to support a wildcat population is very difficult.”



While wildcats enjoy mosaic habitats, and would be capable of surviving on the edge of woodland, farmland, even towns, the risks of persecution and genetic pollution in those areas for the re-introduced population would remain high. “The ideal would be very wild areas, but in the Highlands they have got a gross over population of deer which have over-grazed the landscape, removing vegetation for wildcat prey species. So it isn’t at all simple.”

While Barclay remains confident that “species recovery is a proven tool”, Lister-Kaye points to the successful conservation breeding programme with Iberian lynx in Spain: “You do have to have the right habitat to release these animals into, but it has been done.”