EXCITING NEW IMAGES

Hi All

Thanks so much for your kind words and support for our continuing legal challenge against the windfarm plans at the Clashindarroch. We certainly aren’t giving up and it is clear that you are right behind us all the way. That means a great deal to us all.

Whilst our focus is of course on the legal challenge, we still have many other workstreams going and our field work and monitoring never stops. We are currently camera trapping over vast tracts of Scotland and also have an incredible network of local people who assist and feed into our work. We are very excited to show you images of this new potential wildcat that one of our supporters has discovered. Huge thanks to Rachel N (we of course won’t give out the full name for security reasons) in Aberdeenshire, for capturing on camera what looks to be a massive cat. Rachel has calibrated the size of the cat from measuring the tree in the background to get scale. We think it is at least 45 cm at the shoulder and approaching around 4 feet in length, so it is a huge male. Just look at him striding through the forest.

You can see the clear head striping, the stature and a perfectly thick, blunt, ringed tail. We need to try and get a view of the dorsal stripe to confirm but it is looking very promising and it is always extremely exciting to get a glimpse into the secret life of these magnificent animals. They are still out there, living wild and free and it is currently the breeding season, so we hope it is a bumper one and that we get more kittens on camera this year. There is a very exciting and important summer ahead on all fronts.

It’s sometimes nice to being everything back to basics. Over the past 12 to 18 months we have shown you a continuous stream of new wildcats and even a family of 5 in one image. The Scottish wildcat is not functionally extinct, there are breeding populations still out there. All they need is for their forest homes to be left in peace and targeted and large scale neutering of domestic cats in Wildcat areas.  

We will continue to be the only organisation focused solely on saving the Scottish Wildcat in the wild where it belongs.

Enjoy the glimpse of this beautiful animal in its forest home.

 More news to follow soon so keep watching.

Thanks as always

Emily and the Wildcat Haven Team.