Scottish Wildcat population on brink of extinction

Scotland's Wildcat population is on the brink of extinction with most wild-living cats in fact now hybrids, according to new research.

A five-year project led by NatureScot concluded there are too few Wildcats in the country for the population to be viable. It said hybridisation with feral or domestic cats was a major threat to the species. Disease and habitat loss were identified as other risks.

Biodiversity Minister Lorna Slater said the very existence of an iconic and much-loved species was under threat. The research is the culmination of the Scottish Wildcat Action project: a collaborative effort led by Scotland's nature agency NatureScot, which ran from 2015 to 2020.

Wildcat is considered functionally extinct in Scotland (via Flickr).

In a series of new reports, the project team has made recommendations on how to try and save the species. They include releasing captive-bred Wildcats in certain locations, alongside efforts to neuter hybrid and feral cats and improving habitats.

It also ran genetic tests on 529 cat samples, but none scored highly enough to be considered Wildcats. Almost 118 dead cats, more than half of them killed on roads, were also studied but none proved to be Wildcats.

Researchers said they had found no recent evidence of Wildcats from public sightings, camera-trap surveys or road-killed cats in the Highlands north of Lairg in Sutherland. They also said there was scant evidence of any Wildcats in Argyll and the Trossachs.

Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project said it was likely Wildcats, Wildcat hybrids and domestic cats had mated freely with each other over many generations since the 1960s, creating a situation known as a hybrid swarm.

Last month, a licence was approved for the release in the Cairngorms National Park of Scottish Wildcats bred in captivity by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.