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Shepreth Wildlife Park joins effort to save Scottish wildcats




Four Scottish wildcat kittens born a few weeks ago at Shepreth Wildlife Park could help save the species as they are set to be released into the wild in the Cairngorms in the eastern Highlands of Scotland.

Four Scottish wildcat kittens born at Shepreth Wildlife Park could help save the species. Picture: Keith Heppell
Four Scottish wildcat kittens born at Shepreth Wildlife Park could help save the species. Picture: Keith Heppell

They are part of the Saving Wildcats project which was granted a licence to release captive-bred wildcats back into their natural habitat, as its population is under threat. Eventually, as many as 20 could be released annually in what is the UK's largest national park.

Rebecca Willers, the park’s director, said Shepreth has been part of the project since 2019, when they acquired the father. They acquired the mother last May.

“They’re pure Scottish wildcats here to breed for the Scottish wildcat release programme in the Highlands,” she explained.

“Scottish wildcats have been on a massive decline because of habitat loss and persecution, but more recently, in the last few decades they’ve had a problem with breeding with domesticated cats, which is one of the more concerns.

“A few years back, Dave Barclay, based at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), started this project to first find out which collections in the UK, and private holders, were holding pure Scottish wildcats, because a lot of them are hybridised with these domestic ones, and then started a programme.

“They got funding, they’ve got a wildlife park, they’ve got several breeding centres, and we said we would join and become basically a breeding centre for them.

“So we’re holding them, breeding them, and then those kittens are going either to expand the project with other holders, or then to be released back out into the wild.”

Rebecca notes that Shrepreth has four wildcat kittens, which were born approximately five weeks ago. “They’ve just come out in the last week,” she explains, “we’ll start looking at vaccinating them, microchipping them and sexing them when they’re about nine, 10 weeks old, and at that point Dave will tell us how long he wants us to hold them for and where he would like them sent to after.”

Four Scottish wildcat kittens born at Shepreth Wildlife Park could help save the species. Picture: Keith Heppell
Four Scottish wildcat kittens born at Shepreth Wildlife Park could help save the species. Picture: Keith Heppell

Rebecca and her team are avoiding close contact with the kittens, in order to prevent them from becoming domesticated. “It’s completely hands off,” she said. “There’s no contact. They’re fenced off so the public can’t get close to them either.

“But when you do glimpse an image of them, they are absolutely adorable and they do play just like little kittens, as you would imagine.”

Eventually, as many as 20 wildcats could be released annually into what is the UK's largest national park, which covers 1,748 sq miles between Aberdeen and Loch Ness.

This kind of thing is nothing new at Shepreth, with Rebecca noting that historically the park has been involved in, among other things, red squirrel breeding programmes and polecat breeding programmes.

“Obviously we’ve got the hedgehog hospital and rehabiliation programme as well,” she said.

Visit sheprethwildlifepark.co.uk. For more on the RZSS, go to rzss.org.uk.



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