{"id":607947,"date":"2026-09-22T07:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T07:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/607947\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T07:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T07:20:09","slug":"inside-scotlands-wildcat-hq-its-like-big-brother-for-cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/607947\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Scotland&#8217;s wildcat HQ &#8211; &#8216;It&#8217;s like Big Brother for cats&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Scottish Land and Estates has been supportive of the Scottish Wildcat Conservation Action Plan. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Several estates have been actively helping: providing release sites, monitoring the wildcats, recording sightings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lots of the information being gathered does come from public sightings. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Louise takes me to the territory on which one wildcat that was recently captured on camera:  &#8220;The cat that lives in this territory, Sully, is an amazing cat. She was released in 2024 and she has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cjrvxveqd4go\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">captured on video<\/a> swimming across the River Spey.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wildcats, she says, &#8220;never cease to surprise us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Estelle Morgan points out that wildcats were once widespread throughout the UK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The work they are doing in the Cairngorms will help inform releases elsewhere in Scotland. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She says the only native cat found in the wild in Britain &#8220;deserves to be here, they&#8217;re part of the landscape.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scottish Land and Estates has been supportive of the Scottish Wildcat Conservation Action Plan. Several estates have been&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-607947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}