Scotland's wildcats: bringing Highland tigers back from the brink
What if you could play a part in saving a species from the brink of extinction? Join us for a fascinating conversation with Dr Keri Langridge, Field Manager for the Saving Wildcats partnership, from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, and Dr Roo Campbell from NatureScot, about one of our rarest and most threatened mammals: the wildcat.
We'll explore their distinct physical features, their historical significance in Scotland, and the substantial threats they encounter, including the risk of hybridisation with domestic cats.
The Saving Wildcats partnership is dedicated to establishing a thriving wildcat population in Scotland. We hear about the wildcats recently released into the wild, the diligent monitoring techniques used to safeguard their survival, potential future hurdles, and how we can all help this species not only survive but thrive in Scotland.
More Information
Scottish Wildcat Action - Final Summary Report 2023
Transcript
Kirstin:
Hi and welcome to Make Space For Nature from NatureScot, the podcast that celebrates Scotland's nature, landscapes and species. I'm Kirstin Guthrie and in each episode, we'll help you learn more about our amazing natural world. In this episode, Claire Gordon and I chat to Dr Keri Langridge, Field Manager for the Saving Wildcats Partnership from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, and Dr Roo Campbell from NatureScot about one of our rarest and most threatened mammals, the wildcat. Keri and Roo give us an insight into this elusive and critically endangered species. They explain some of the challenges in trying to establish a viable population of wildcats in Scotland. And we find out how we can all help save this truly iconic animal.
So, we're here at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland's Highland Wildlife Park, set in the Cairngorms National Park. It's a beautiful winter day, I'm sure the resident polar bears are very grateful for the snow showers. However, we've wrapped up warm and headed out to view some of the wildcats living here. Now, many other wildcats are being cared for away from public view here in the Saving Wildcats Conservation Breeding for Release Centre, and we'll hear all about them later. First off though, Claire, you're going to chat to Roo about the history of wildcats and how to identify them.
Claire:
Hello. Yes, thanks, Kirstin. Okay, so we're lucky enough to be sat next to the wildcat enclosures here at the park, but many of our listeners will never have seen a wildcat before. So, Roo, can you explain what a wildcat is and what it looks like?
Roo:
Okay. A wild cat is our only remaining wild cat. It's a bit like a domestic cat. In fact, they're very closely related. It's just a little bit bigger. So, it's about one fifth larger. So that's typically, for those in metric measurements, that's about a kilo, typically, heavier than your average house cat. And they look somewhat distinct from a typical domestic cat, but there's some overlap. So, they're stripey cats, what we call mackerel tabby. But they've got distinctive features that you can use to distinguish them typically from, say, a domestic tabby. And, and that includes the strong markings on the nape. They've got a dorsal line that runs down the back, but doesn't go onto the tail. And then the big feature that everyone will notice is, of course, is that blunt banded tail that they have, so it's got a black tip and it's got clear bands on it as well. So, that's the distinguishing features. I'm looking at a cat right now and it's got, it's sitting in its tail, but it's got those stripey features that I would associate with a wildcat. But because they interbreed with domestic cats and we've got hybrids around it's not always that easy to tell them apart. So, some of these hybrids can look a little bit like wildcats, some don't. So, you also then have to rely on the genetics of the cat to tell. And in fact, that's really the only surefire way these days.
Claire:
Okay, thanks. So, can you tell us why the wildcat has become such an endangered species here in Scotland?
Roo:
So, I already alluded to one of the factors, that's hybridisation. Som hybridization is a symptom of the status of the wild cat in Scotland. They're highly hybridised. We have a situation where we use the awful word hybrid swarm, where you've got basically the cats have interbred for many generations with domestic cats, you know, hybrids breeding with hybrids. And it becomes quite difficult to tell them apart. The reason that they got there is probably because at some point there was effectively too few wildcats to find other wildcats to mate with and then they started breeding with, with domestic cats at some point. And some recent work done by RZSS and others looked at the genetics of hybridisation and were able to pinpoint that there was a period probably in between the 60s and 80s, maybe 50s to 90s, but really 60s to 80s, 1960s to 1980s that is, where probably hybridisation really took off. So, at some point in that period the wildcat population got really small and that was before they were protected.
They were only protected in 1988. So probably it was persecution, but mixed in with other factors. So that meant that they were less resilient to that sort of pressure. So, the way the habitat was laid out, for example, maybe changes in farming practices in Scotland, these could have all contributed towards it, but ultimately, population got small, they started breeding with domestic cats, you kicked off a whole process, and we are where we are now.
Claire:
Okay, so they've had quite a tricky past. So, what do we know about the wildcat populations in Scotland now? Can you share some of the research that you've worked on?
Roo:
Yeah, so the project prior to the current project, which is Saving Wildcats, the prior project was called Scottish Wildcat Action. And ahead of that, we actually did some work on surveys using camera traps. And some work that the University of Oxford WildCRU was involved with, for example, was doing surveys all the way through from the north of Scotland all the way down to the edge of the highlands. And I was also involved with doing surveys for the Cairngorm wildcat project. So that gave us a kind of wide-ranging picture of what the wildcat status was like across Scotland and combining that with public sightings told us that actually there was not a lot of activity, for example, in the north, the far north of Scotland. Not very much in the west either actually, so there seemed to be more of a hotspot in central highlands in eastern Scotland. So that led us to shortlist some sites for doing the work of the Scottish Orchid Action Project. So, we ended up working chiefly in five areas, six initially, and then we did an awful lot of annual surveys, we repeatedly did lots of surveys. And throughout all of this time we're picking up, particularly in those areas, because they were hot spots, we were picking up what looked like wildcats. But when we were trapping them to take samples and rerun the genetics, the genetics indicated that these cats weren't pure wildcats, I'm sorry to use that term, they showed signs of hybridisation.
Claire:
So, the evidence was showing then that there were too few wildcats in Scotland?
Roo:
Yeah, that's right. So that was our fear. And it was such an important conclusion to come to, that we actually brought in the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and we brought in specialists from there to review the data that we had. So, we provided them with all the data we collected over the years, from all sources, all the surveys we'd done, public sightings, surveys that other, other organisations have done that I already alluded to. And they came to the same conclusion that there were effectively too few wildcats to be sustainable and that their recommendation actually was that the population should be supplemented with cats from other places.
Claire:
Okay, thanks Roo. That's a great insight into why we need to help this endangered species. I'll hand back to Kirstin now who's chatting to Keri about what work is underway to help them.
Kirstin:
Thanks Claire. Hi Keri, can you tell us about the work that's being done here to save, help save Scotland's wildcats?
Keri:
Hi, sure. So, I work for Saving Wildcats, which is the next phase of wildcat conservation in Scotland, following on from what Roo mentioned, which was the IUCN review that the status of the wildcat was no longer viable in Scotland without breeding and release. So, Saving Wildcats is a partnership project. We're funded by EU Life and our partners are NatureScot, Forestry and Land Scotland, Cairngorms National Park, and we have two international partners which are Nordens Ark and Junta de Andalucia, who did the reintroductions of the Iberian Lynx. And the project is led by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, which is who I work for. So, Saving Wildcats started in 2019/2020, just as COVID was kicking off. And the objective of Saving Wildcats is, over the five-to-six-year duration of the project, to do the first captive breeding and release of wildcats into the national park. So, this year has been the first year of the releases. Prior to that the project has been building a conservation breeding centre for breeding that's here at the wildlife park. And this year we, and my aspect of the project, which is the field side, the in-situ conservation, we've spent the last three years doing feasibility studies, community engagement, stakeholder engagement, and threat mitigation for the wildcats, so that when we release them, we can minimize the risks as much as possible. So, the releases began this year. We released the first cat in June. They were released by soft-release, which is delayed release. We built soft-release pens across the park, well, across the release site within the park. The release site is Cairngorms Connect which is itself a partnership project within the national park. So, we released the cats into Cairngorms Connect between June and September. So that was 19 cats that were released, all from the wildlife park here. And released at four different locations within Kingholmes Connect.
Kirstin:
Wow, that's a lot of cats. And how do you decide where's the best place to release them? And also, how do you prepare the cats themselves for release?
Keri:
So in terms of choosing a location, it was quite a difficult thing to do because there aren't that many locations in Scotland that were suitable. What we tried to do is look at there being enough suitable habitat for a population of wildcats and an area where we could mitigate the threats which are primarily from persecution and from hybridisation with domestic cats, and potentially disease transfer from domestic cats. So, the site that we are working in, Cairngorms Connect, is a project that's got long-term conservation aims, so they are restoring the habitat and also it happens to be from all of our surveys an area with very few feral cats. And we have very positive engagement with all the landowners around Cairngorms Connect. So that was why it was chosen initially. It also, the funding stipulates actually that it has to be in an area with lots of European protected sites, and there's not many of those in Northern Scotland. So, Cairngorms Connect has got a lot of European protected sites within it, which was another reason for releasing them here. In terms of preparing the cats that's the work of the ex-situ team. Which is managed by David Barclay here at the park, and the cats were bred in breeding enclosures where they stayed with the parents for six to eight months, and then at the usual dispersal age, they're transferred to what we call pre-release enclosures, which are much larger enclosures, all still here at the park, off display, so they are not on display to the public. They're huge enclosures that try to recreate natural settings as much as possible, and they are monitored by 24-hour CCTV by the ex-situ team. So, they manage the cats very hands-off so that they don't get habituated to people to try and encourage development of natural behavior as much as possible.
Kirstin:
Wow, such a lot of work that goes into the preparation and obviously they're out there now. So how do you keep track of these released wildcats and if something goes wrong, for instance, do you get involved?
Keri:
Yeah, so what we call the post-release monitoring is a huge element of the work, very resource-heavy, it's very intensive. So, all the cats that we release are collared with a GPS radio tracking collar. These are collars that are tried and tested that have been used across Europe for a long time to track wildcats and we've actually used them here in Scotland in the previous projects for tracking hybrid cats. So, we know they're very reliable. They are the lightest ones possible and people may have seen photos of them or videos of them. People often ask us actually why we haven't cut the end off. We have cut the end off. The bit that's still overhanging is an aerial. You need to have an aerial to transmit the radio signal. So, all the cats are collared before they're released. We actually put the collars on and the cats went back into pre-release so we could monitor the cats with the collars on and see how they took to them. We didn't actually notice them really having any behavioural response to having those collars on. So, after the cats are released, we track them every day, seven days a week. We track them nine to five. We have a full team of people to do that. So, my field team, which is four project officers, we've had volunteers helping with us, we have contractors helping, partners, everybody else because it's very intensive work. So far, we've actually done very well. We haven't lost track of any of the cats. We know where they all are as of right now, nearly six months on after the release we still know where every single cat is, even the one that went quite a long way. We found him eventually after a couple of weeks. So, the collars are the main method of tracking. And we also have a pretty extensive grid of camera traps up across the whole site to keep an eye on the cats, but also to monitor for other wild-living cats within the area. And to monitor how the cats are getting on, see if we can look at the body condition and eventually at some point to see whether we can see any evidence of reproduction from the released cats.
Kirstin:
Excellent. And I appreciate that there may be some challenges out there for the cats. So, can you describe what they'll be dealing with now they're kind of out there on their own I suppose?
Keri:
Yes. I mean, they have a lot of challenges. So, actually, so far, they've done a lot better than I think anybody was expecting. These kinds of projects come with very high mortality risk. It's just the nature of the nature of the beast. So, we were expecting high mortality, particularly from roads. With the best will in the world, there are roads throughout this relief site. We have the A9, which is the biggest road in Scotland in Northern Scotland. But so far, despite the cats walking up and down the roads, crossing the roads frequently, we haven't had any road mortality. Their main other threats are going to come from land use, so threats from particularly estates that rear game birds for shooting, because they do predator control. And what we need to make sure is that while they're doing that predator control, they don't accidentally kill any of the wildcats. And obviously hybridisation remains a threat so unneutered domestic cats and hybrid cats as well because we still have a wild living hybrid cat population so there is a very real risk of these cats breeding with a domestic cat or a hybrid cat. So, we closely monitor where the cats are and then we do trap, neuter, release of hybrid or feral cats, to prevent them breeding. And because we monitor the cats very carefully with the tracking data, so every day the data is checked for every individual cat, if we notice anything suspicious on the tracking data, because it takes a fix every 15 minutes, so we have very high-resolution information, if there's anything we notice, like for example, that the cat has stopped moving, we go out immediately and investigate. And we do intervene. We have had situations with a couple of cats where they stopped moving and we think they were having trouble finding food. That was very early on after their release, so we did some supportive feeding, supplementary feeding for them. And so far, all of them have then regained their activity levels. So that's, that's the sort of intervention and obviously we have also cats come into conflict with people. Cats have come into conflict in areas where pheasants are bred in pheasant pens and then we engage with the estates and we work together very closely with them to look at the impact the cats are having and how we can mitigate some of those problems. And we have had instances of cats predating chickens. And it's similar, you know, we have to engage with the people where that's happening and try to give them some advice about how to prevent it. But ultimately the cats are now wild animals so shey're going to behave like wild animals. We can't control them. We can just monitor what they do and try and help where we can.
Kirstin:
Yeah, absolutely. That's really interesting actually. Just seeing it from where the cats are out there and what they're coming up against as well. So, thanks Keri. It's such important work and, you know, obviously you've got a large team of staff and volunteers out there doing, doing a lot of work, and we really do hope the, the cats do well. So, back over to Claire who's finding out what the future may look like for wildcats as well as what we can all do to help.
Claire:
Thanks Kirstin. So, major steps forward, but we still have quite a long way to go for wildcats in Scotland. Roo, what do you think needs to happen next?
Roo:
What we've got to do is learn from this project. And it is a huge learning curve this, actually. Keri was saying it's been much more successful than we expected. It has, but we're still learning. And I'm sure that the next release will be even more successful. Once this project's done, well actually even before it's finished actually, we're already talking about the next phase we'll be launching in the development of a new action plan very shortly. But what we need to do is basically expand the work of this project into new areas, establish wildcat populations in wider and wider areas, but at the same time dealing with these big challenges and the biggest being mitigating the threats from ongoing hybridisation given that we've got basically a large area of Scotland where we've got lots of hybrids running around, not all of which we would necessarily want to contribute towards the future of wildcats. So, it's a very big challenge and we'll have to develop a solution that's workable at a larger scale. This is a great start, this project.
Claire:
Brilliant, okay. And finally, Keri, what can our listeners do to help wildcat recovery efforts in Scotland?
Keri:
Well, you can subscribe to our newsletter so you can learn all about the progress of saving wildcats. On a more practical note, if you have a cat or anyone you know has a cat - neutered, vaccinated and microchipped is very, very important for wildcat conservation. Microchipping is very helpful for us doing TMVR to identify whether a cat is owned or not. If people own land, if they can make their land good for wildcats. The most important thing for wildcats is they've got a lot of cover. You know, you can let a wildcat sleep in your hay barn. If you can increase the number of mice and voles that you've got. If you can have rabbits. Rabbits are a really important food source, so if you can encourage rabbits on your land, that would be very beneficial. But anything you can do really to make habitat better for wildcats and more welcoming for wildcats in the future, that's what's going to be important.
Roo:
They really like gorse scrub, by the way, as well. Yes, don't go cleaning your gorse.
Claire:
Excellent advice. Okay, thanks for talking with us today, Keri and Roo. It's been fascinating hearing about the great work that's been done to save Scotland's wildcats for a future where wildcats are not just surviving, but thriving.
Kirstin:
Thanks for listening. If you're enjoying Make Space for Nature, please follow it on your podcast app and leave a review or rating. We'd also love you to tell more people about the series. For more ways to connect with and help protect Scotland's natural world, go to nature.scot.
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