BORN to be MILD
Has mating with domestic animals drawn the teeth of our ‘Highland tiger’ – the wildcat?
IT IS celebrated as the Tiger of the Highlands – striking, handsome and powerful, the very essence of a wild predator living by stealth and strength. Sadly, the elusive Scottish wildcat is now becoming better known as one of our most endangered mammals, whose numbers are teetering on the brink of extinction.
I have worked on wildcat projects for eight years now and I believe it is more vital than ever that we do everything we can to preserve the touchstone Felis silvestris.
My interest stemmed initially from a fondness for domestic cats. But as my curiosity in animals deepened into a professional interest in mammals, I became fascinated by their behaviour and wanted to find out why they were so secretive and so cryptic.
Despite growing up in Scotland, I had never once caught sight of a wildcat; they were just these strange, almost mythical beasts that you never saw. For years, the closest I got was a favourite postcard that showed two snarling wildcats sitting next to a cairn and a bit of heather.
I later learned that this is not really an accurate example of their habitat and they were probably captive cats set up in a pose since real wildcats are generally nocturnal and prefer forest edging on open habitats, such as long pastures and rough grazing, or forestry clearings where they can hunt for mice, voles and rabbits.
What we do know is that the Scottish wildcat is the only remaining native member of the cat family in Britain – we lost the lynx many hundreds of years ago – and it has been present on our shores since the end of the last ice age.
Tens of thousands were once scattered across the UK, but Scottish Wildcat Action (SWA) is now working in only five wildcat priority areas within the Highlands, at Morvern, Strathpeffer, Northern Strathspey, the Angus Glens, and Strathbogie.
Domestic cats, on the other hand, originated from African wildcats and only arrived here about 2,000 to 3,000 years ago and yet this relatively recent introduction has helped caused mayhem among the ranks of native wildcats.
WE HAVE in the recent past seen a sharp rise in ‘hybridisation’, where wildcats and domestic cats inter-breed. We suspect the wildcats were already at a critical point of population decline when this rise in hybridisation began.
Indeed, a new study for SWA has concluded that the ‘pure’ Scottish wildcat may already be extinct after experts obtained genetic information from a database of 295 wild-living and captive wildcats and failed to find a 100 per cent genetically pure wildcat remaining in the wild.
As a result, previous estimates that purebred wildcats were scarcer than the Bengal tiger and some 70 times rarer than the giant panda may have to be revised.
Spotting a wildcat in the wild, of course, has always been notoriously tricky. Although similar in appearance to domestic tabbies, wildcats are usually a lot bigger and much heavier.
Wildcats can weigh up to 17lbs compared with 10lbs for a large moggy, and are up to 3ft long.
They also have broader skulls to hold the bigger brains they need to survive in the wild and, curiously, shorter guts, too. Perhaps that’s because they eat more raw meat than a typical domestic cat.
The markings, especially on the tail, are the giveaway though.
A wildcat’s tail is thick and clublike, with bold, distinct rings which do not join together and a large blunt, black tip. Domestic cats have thinner and straighter stripes on the head and if the dorsal stripe along the spine continues onto the tail, you can be sure it is not a Scottish wildcat.
But then, what exactly is a Scottish wildcat these days? During our recent study we did not find a single animal with absolutely no sign of domestic cat ancestry.
With so few wildcats left, it is difficult for them to find other wildcats to breed with, whereas up to 1.5million feral cats are thought to be at large in the UK.
Even animals that scored full marks in a pelage test – a visual examination of coat markings and tail shape – were found to be hybrid to some degree.
In fact, SWA is careful to avoid the term ‘pure’ and we believe it should be dispensed with in an effort to save the ‘best of the rest’. To that end, captured animals that score fewer than 17 points out of 21 on the pelage test are neutered.
Recognising that all remaining wildcats could have some domestic cat ancestry, any captured animals that score 17 to 21 are released back to the wild to potentially breed. Essentially, the working threshold for conservation breeding is when we are very sure that an animal is at least three-quarters wildcat. These cats are the vessels of the last of the Scottish wildcat genome.
But hybridisation is only one of a raft of problems that threaten the wildcat. After the war, they were shot as predators by landowners – perfectly legally until legislation to protect them was introduced in 1988. But accidental persecution may continue because feral cats, which are easily mistaken for wildcats, especially at night, can still be shot legally as pests.
Also, wildcats are carnivores and rabbit was their main prey. When the rabbit population was devastated by an outbreak of myxomatosis in the 1980s, that may also have not helped numbers.
Feral cats also pass on a lot of disease and parasites, including fatal conditions such as FIV (feline immunodeficiency virus) and FeLV (feline leukaemia virus).
SWA is a national conservation partnership of 20 groups and charities and we are working to redress the balance with breeding programmes. As of August last year, there were 94 wildcats in the UK conservation breeding programme spread across zoos, wildlife parks and private collections.
Litters of kittens were born recently at Edinburgh Zoo and at the Highland Wildlife Park, near Aviemore, Inverness-shire, where new arrivals are kept out of public view to ensure they remain as ‘wild’ as possible.
BUT the breeding programme is only a safety net and there is a long way to go before we can release them into the wild. There is no point in doing that before we fully understand the reasons behind the decline.
We have set out central aims to secure at least five stable populations in the wild, improve our understanding of the process of hybridisation, improve awareness of the threats posed by domestic and feral cats and promote responsible domestic cat ownership around our priority areas.
We are also working to reduce the risk of accidental persecution and are talking to landowners to better understand how land management can boost numbers.
We have commissioned an independent review by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which will recommend what further measures can be taken to help protect the species.
It is vital we get this right – if we don’t, then one day soon we may have seen the last of our celebrated Highland Tigers. And that would be a conservation tragedy.