{"id":229402,"date":"2025-10-21T13:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T13:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/229402\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T13:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T13:13:10","slug":"scottish-wildcat-project-seeks-new-backers-due-to-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/229402\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish Wildcat project seeks new backers due to Brexit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Scotland'sScotland’s The Big Picture<\/p>\n

Saving Wildcats has released 46 captive-bred cats over the last three years<\/p>\n

A conservation project says it will have to find new ways to help fund the captive breeding of Scottish wildcats for release into the wild due to the effects of Brexit.<\/p>\n

Saving Wildcats has released 46 cats into the Cairngorms National Park over the last three years, and some of the females have gone on to produce litters of kittens.<\/p>\n

Saving Wildcats said it needed additional funding to keep the project going because it could no longer access European Union (EU) support it had previously relied on.<\/p>\n

Scottish wildcats were described as “functionally extinct” in the wild<\/a> in a major study published in 2018.<\/p>\n

Saving Wildcats is a partnership led by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS).<\/p>\n

The cats are raised at the Conservation Breeding for Release Centre, which is based in a private area of RZSS’s Highland Wildlife Park near Aviemore.<\/p>\n

The centre has facilities for breeding, veterinary care and monitoring cats fitted with GPS collars to track their movements in the wild.<\/p>\n

Dr Helen Senn, who heads up the project, said: “Just a few years ago, the species was teetering on the edge of extinction in Scotland. <\/p>\n

“Now we’re watching them not only survive but start to raise their own kittens in the wild. That gives us real hope for the future.”<\/p>\n

But she said more cats had to be bred and released to give the species a “fighting chance” of survival in the wild.<\/p>\n

Saving Wildcats said it had received significant support from the EU Life Programme<\/a>, but it was no longer eligible for the funding after the UK left the union five years ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dr Senn said: “It takes huge amounts of time, expertise and resources to bring a species back from the brink and we can’t do it alone.”<\/p>\n

How are Scottish wildcats being saved?<\/p>\n

\"SavingSaving Wildcats\"Scotland'sScotland’s The Big Picture<\/p>\n

Saving Wildcats is breeding and releasing Scottish wildcats because the animals are on the brink of extinction in the wild.<\/p>\n

Wildcats favour the woodland habitats found in the Cairngorms National Park.<\/p>\n

The Scottish wildcat is the only native member of the cat family still found in the wild in Britain – but today only found in small numbers in parts of Scotland, according to NatureScot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lynx also once roamed free in Britain before being hunted to extinction.<\/p>\n

Wildcats were persecuted for centuries, but other threats have included habitat loss, disease and breeding with domestic cats, a process called hybridisation.<\/p>\n

Saving Wildcats said research suggested that the levels of wildcat DNA found in wildcats in captivity in the UK was “considerably higher” than those found in wild-living cat populations in Scotland.<\/p>\n

It added that most of the wildcats in its programme scored higher than the minimum genetic threshold used for breeding the animals in captivity.<\/p>\n

The Cairngorms is the UK’s biggest national park and has large areas of woodland habitats favoured by the cats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland’s The Big Picture Saving Wildcats has released 46 captive-bred cats over the last three years A conservation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-229402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}