PICTURES: Big cats on the prowl in Dorset \u2013 “There are around 30 leopards in Dorset alone”<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n The sighting adds to a long history of reports of unusually large cats across Dorset.\n<\/p>\n
\n Dorset Police has previously recorded reports from members of the public of animals described as panthers, black leopards, lynx or puma-type cats.\n<\/p>\n
\n A Freedom of Information request made by the Echo in 2021 found eight reported big-cat sightings in Dorset between 2018 and 2020, including in Poole, Dorchester, Weymouth and Sturminster Newton.\n<\/p>\n
\n In July 2018\/2019, two sightings were reported in Poole, including one account of a black panther said to have been seen sitting in a tree.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 2021, Southbourne based-big cat expert Jonathan McGowan said: “There are around 30 leopards in Dorset alone because it has such a high deer population.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Most of the big cats are very shy and keep out of the way because they want to remain undetected.”\n<\/p>\n
\n More recently, in October 2023, Hamworthy woman Mary Abreu reported a close encounter with a large, dark animal while walking in Wareham Forest near Lawson\u2019s Clump.\n<\/p>\n
\n She said the animal shot across the path in front of her.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI knew it wasn\u2019t a normal animal”, she said at the time. \u201cIt seems odd to even describe it as being a cat \u2013 it was far too big to be a cat.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Big cat reports remain unverified, and sightings can be difficult to assess because of distance, lighting, terrain and the possibility of misidentifying large domestic cats, dogs or other wildlife.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, police advise people not to approach an animal they believe could pose a risk and to report an immediate threat by calling 999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kelvin Diffey said he was taking an evening walk along his local river when he noticed an animal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-742575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}