Home   News   Article

Aigas Field Centre near Beauly welcomes birth of two Scottish Wildcat kittens amid ongoing conservation programme


By Philip Murray

Easier access to your trusted, local news. Subscribe to a digital package and support local news publishing.



Click here to sign up to our free newsletters!
The wildcat kittens explore their home. Picture: Ben Jones.
The wildcat kittens explore their home. Picture: Ben Jones.

FURRY new additions have helped to swell wildcat numbers in a key conservation programme near Beauly.

The Aigas Field Centre has confirmed that two new kittens have been born at the site, which is among the sites spearheading efforts to rescue the species from extinction.

The two female kittens are the first litter for their mother Glynis.

"The two female kittens are now a few weeks old and are already competent climbers with bags of ferocity," said Ben Jones, staff naturalist at the centre. "We have several conservation projects on the go at Aigas, but the Wildcat Breeding Programme is by far our most critical. We are delighted to see all the hard work put in by all our team of rangers rewarded with two new little faces.

"In the future we hope to see the wildcats bred at Aigas go back into the wild and thrive. Threats these fierce predators face are still present and need to be addressed before they can be released.

"Hybridisation with domestic feral cats has been causing the wildcat to disappear through genetic dilution. The wildcat in Scotland has effectively been fading away before our eyes. Hybridisation in this case is a symptom of the historic intensive persecution this animal has faced in Britain alongside the declining health of our natural environment.

“The wildcat in Scotland is now considered functionally extinct in the wild, there are just too few spread over too large an area, which makes breeding programmes such as ours vital to their conservation.

“We do not receive funding from the government for the work we do with wildcats, so we have set up an adoption scheme and crowdfunding page to help raise funds to pay for their husbandry.”

Aigas has run a breeding programme since 2011. For more details visit www.aigas.co.uk/conservation/wildcat-breeding-project

Mr Jones added: "The future of the wildcat in Scotland is dependent on two main objectives. The first is to breed a genetically strong and diverse captive population ready for release. The second is to address the threats these animals face in the wild.

"Hopefully by focussing effort in a select few areas across the country wildcats can be released into healthy heartlands from where they can begin to build up a strong population in the wild."


Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.



This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies - Learn More