t first I thought our wildcat quest would take us
to a heathery glen with ancient Scots pines and
a glorious peaty salmon river the colour of black
tea. Instead, ace wildlife photographer Laurie Campbell
and I are inspecting paw prints a stone’s throw from a dairy
farm, within earshot of an A-road. Rather than the ‘chip
chip’ of crossbills, a classic Caledonian pine forest sound, I
can hear the familiar ‘cheep cheep’ of house sparrows.
“This trail could belong to a wildcat, or a feral or farm
cat, or a hybrid,” says zoologist Ruairidh ‘Roo’ Campbell
with a shrug. “Wildcat prints are slightly bigger, but
all tracks expand in soft mud,” adds co-worker Monica
Griffith. “You can’t ID the cats from field signs alone.”
Roo and Monica work for Oxford University’s Wildlife
Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) and have let us
shadow their fieldwork on condition we keep all locations
secret. They’re surveying a site frequented by a motley
assortment of cats to see how they interact, and to trial
baiting techniques. “We’ll set up a camera-trap here,” Roo
continues, “but even if we capture some images it’s pretty
tricky to tell a wildcat from a tabby hybrid.”
Separating hybrids from
genuine Scottish wildcats is
at the heart of the thorny
problem facing conservationists.
Lack of data – how many
wildcats and hybrids are there,
and where are they? – makes
matters thornier still.Counting cats
In the lowland area we’re visiting, 50 trailcams have been
deployed, each checked every fortnight. One camera has
logged over 2,000 images, including a possible wildcat;
another has recorded badgers, a pine marten, roe deer
and two cats, one clearly a tabby, the other a hybrid.
Scottish Natural Heritage extends the fieldwork to nine
other regions across the Highlands this winter, and will
start live-trapping to catch suspected wildcats and take
blood samples for genetic testing. Three extra researchers
are joining the team, but it’s a massive task.
To help sift the cat pictures the scientists are using an
ID system based on seven visual characteristics. Each is
marked out of 3, giving a maximum of 21 for the cats that
look most like wildcats (see sidebar, right).
“Anything over 19 meets the ‘strict’ definition of
a wildcat,” Roo explains. “We
camera-trap cats that score
17 quite often, which is
heartening – even better,
our survey recently
rated one superb
male as a 20.Natural loners,
wildcats hunt on
their own and
roam widely. In the
western Highlands,
their home ranges
cover 8–18km^2A
One politician has
declared that wildcats
“have the heart of a
lion and are the tigers
of our highlands”
SCOTTISH WILDCATS
Monica and
Roo show Ben
(with glasses)
their patch,
watched over
by 50 remote
camera-traps.