Subsequently, loss of habitat and prey, hybridisation and culling to protect game led to wildcats gaining protected status in 1981. Persecution is now unlikely to overtake the rate of increase’, a prediction that turned out to be somewhat premature. In 1947, he recorded wildcats as being ‘numerous and widespread in the mainland Highlands. The rallying of Highland keepers and stalkers to the colours in the First World War allowed the species, in the words of the naturalist Frank Fraser Darling, to make ‘a wonderful recovery’. Another few thousand more diluted hybrids and feral cats also exist outdoors. Of these, none may be pure wildcat, most carrying at least 25% domestic cat genes. There are estimated to be fewer than 100 specimens of Scotland’s apex predator left in the wild, concentrated in the northern and north-eastern Highlands, in Morven and the Ardnamurchan peninsula in the western Highlands. The question today, however, isn’t so much what to do when in a tight corner with Felis sylvestris sylvestris - or Felis sylvestris grampia, if you prefer - the Scottish version of the European wildcat, but where to find one in the first place. The moggie referred to is a wildcat and the advice, in plain English, is not to mess with one when its claws are out. ‘Touch not the cat bott a glove,’ warns the motto of the confederation of smaller Highland clans that make up Clan Chattan. Joe Gibbs considers whether curiosity or interbreeding killed the ‘Highland tiger’. Once widespread across the British Isles, there are now fewer than 100 pure Scottish wildcats left. Country Life's Top 100 architects, builders, designers and gardeners.
0 kommentar(er)
