Original subtitles

Countries are like people:

some are boisterous, extravagant, showy.

Others present a calm, quiet and restful exterior.

But if it is spectacle, extravagance and drama you enjoy,

then Scotland performs well on the World's stage.

Consider this:

a mountainous landscape that soars skyward and dives down

towards a coastline spattered with towering, wind-lashed islands.

Cities and towns that declaim a decorous history

and a vibrant, contemporary culture.

Scotland boasts a strong allegiance to science,

the arts, engineering, invention.

And, of course, its celebrated literature is often accompanied

by an equally-celebrated drink!

Yes, if it is spectacle and drama you enjoy,

then Scotland offers a vibrant, thoughtful

and inspirational culture.

And when it comes to the natural world,

this small country offers many surprises.

The Scottish Highland region is one of Europe’s most spectacular landscapes.

Its gloomy glens, towering mountains

and a seemingly unending wilderness combine to

present a lowering landscape

that is ripe for poetic invention and unbounded imagination.

No wonder the written and spoken literature of the country

abounds with tales of Kelpies,

those shape-shifting water spirits.

And the devilish Each Uisge,

that mischievous Highland water-horse.

Such mythological characters continue to populate an imaginary world

and fulfil their far from playful potential

in the imagination of today’s storytellers.

Animals, too, highlight Scotland’s uniqueness within the natural realm

of the four countries of the British Isles.

Seals, porpoises and dolphins patrol their inshore domain

whilst Sea Eagles and Golden Eagles soar over land and sea.

Rivers are fish-rich and are often home to otters and even beavers.

On land, Red Deer and the elusive Capercaillie and Pine Marten

On land, Red Deer and the elusive Capercaillie and Pine Marten tempt the talents of film-makers and photographers

tempt the talents of film-makers and photographers

from around the world.

And much to the surprise of many,

the Cairngorm region has a substantial herd of reindeer.

But there is one intriguing animal that has secured its home

in this Northern kingdom –

in this Northern kingdom – an animal that is little known, seldom seen

an animal that is little known, seldom seen

and rarely filmed or photographed.

Indeed, this animal is almost as fictional

as the Kelpie and its mysterious companions.

It is the Scottish Wildcat.

This secretive, seldom spotted carnivore is related

– at some distance it should be said –

to other big cats of the world.

There was once a time when the wildcat thrived

throughout the whole of mainland Britain.

However, that time is long since

and its territory is now severely limited

to a selection of regions,

such as the Cairngorms, and the far north of Scotland.

The Scottish Wildcat is a wild species that has been living

here in Scotland

for the last 10,000 years.

It’s quite a bit larger than a house cat,

and is famously thought to be untameable.

> A Scottish Wildcat is Scotland’s only native cat now

since the lynx went extinct

approximately 1,000 to 2,000 years ago

and it’s more than just a native cat species;

it’s a symbol for Scotland,

it’s a symbol for the wild nature that we have.

Given that the wildcat’s build is akin to that of a large tabby cat,

to the inexperienced eye, domestic cats and wildcats are almost indistinguishable.

However, there are key identifying traits that help distinguish between the two.

However, there are key identifying traits that help distinguish between the two. Domestic cats are of course an individual species of their own.

Domestic cats are of course an individual species of their own.

They're used to being around people, they're used to being indoors in homes

and although they do venture out and we have domestics that go wild

- which are feral cats - and they can survive to an extent in the wild

- which are feral cats - and they can survive to an extent in the wild they're not designed for that, whereas wildcats are.

they're not designed for that, whereas wildcats are.

> The weather here in the Scottish Highlands can be quite interesting,

it can be really quite wintry

and of course the Scottish Wildcat

it’s got a thick dense fur adapted to this climate.

It’s got something like 20,000 hairs per square centimetre on its back.

The wildcat’s diet is like that of any carnivore

and thus it is highly predictable.

Rabbits, mice and other small mammals are its usual quarry.

Their habitat is a predictable mix of bare moorland and thick woodlands

where the heather, gorse and undergrowth provide substantial cover.

As with any creature, an abundant food source is key to their survival.

They tend to occupy a mix of habitats,

but primarily they like mixed woodland with open grassland

and then some denser forest, be it pine forest or deciduous forest

where they have some cover and what they have there

where they have some cover and what they have there is the transition from an area where they’ll find shelter,

is the transition from an area where they’ll find shelter,

they’ll find dry areas, females will find areas to rear young;

they’ll find dry areas, females will find areas to rear young; but they’ll also live on the fringes of areas where there’ll be lots of prey.

but they’ll also live on the fringes of areas where there’ll be lots of prey.

Wildcats are both solitary and rare

so population estimates vary wildly.

Indeed, when it comes to assessing the current number

of the Scottish Wildcat, no exact figure can be given.

Ten years ago it was established opinion that around 400 wildcats remained.

During the making of this film,

it became evident that under one hundred wildcats are alive in Scotland today.

Naturally opinions vary and disputes on this sensitive issue can be heated.

The reality is we just don’t know how many wildcats we’ve got left

Estimates vary from as low as 30 to as high as 400,

but we just don’t know.

We’re still trying to ascertain just how many there are,

where they are and where they’re not.

> With recent research, it’s really starting to look like

numbers are much, much lower than we first appreciated

and that’s mainly because,

they’re so hard to study in the wild.

They’re very elusive, they’re pretty small

and they are difficult to find.

But whatever the accuracy of these assumed or actual figures,

the fact remains that, despite being fully protected by law,

the Scottish Wildcat is in danger of disappearing completely,

possibly within the next five years.

It would not be amiss or alarmist to claim

that this iconic animal is teetering on the edge of extinction.

We have a population that is critically endangered,

one that needs all of the conservation action that we can give it,

because without it the future of the wildcat is incredibly worrying.

> We focus a lot on international conservation issues,

like saving the tiger, saving the panda, saving the Polar Bear,

but actually there is a species right on our doorstep

which is probably even more threatened than those species,

and yet so many people just don’t know about it.

Whilst wildcats and domestic cats look somewhat alike,

there are several visual differences between the two.

For example, the wildcat has a more muscular build

For example, the wildcat has a more muscular build and its face and jaw are heavy set compared to a domestic cat.

and its face and jaw are heavy set compared to a domestic cat.

Scottish Wildcat is quite a lot bigger,

it can be up to 25% bigger than a domestic cat.

They are always tabby marked,

so they’re grey, greyish brown with black stripes.

> Those markings are very different to a domestic cat.

> Those markings are very different to a domestic cat. They might look similar to Joe Bloggs,

They might look similar to Joe Bloggs,

and you have to kind of train your eye into it.

Things like the dorsal stripe; that goes all the way down

but it will stop at the base of the tail

whereas in a domestic cat that stripe will run all the way down into the tail.

whereas in a domestic cat that stripe will run all the way down into the tail. Now the tail is something that lots of people talk about

Now the tail is something that lots of people talk about

because it is so distinctive in a wildcat.

because it is so distinctive in a wildcat. > A really big, thick, ringed tail with a blunt end,

> A really big, thick, ringed tail with a blunt end,

that’s a really diagnostic feature that separates them from domestic cats,

which typically - although they might have ringed tails -

are usually much thinner and narrow to a point.

So that’s a really key difference to look for.

> There’s also the side stripes which lends the name of the Highland Tiger

to the Scottish Wildcat,

and those stripes can be broken but they can’t be spotted,

and those stripes can be broken but they can’t be spotted, whereas a domestic cat pretty much has spots on its side.

whereas a domestic cat pretty much has spots on its side.

Their head is much larger

and when you look at them their ears are actually positioned

towards the side of their head, not on top,

and they have a much bigger skull

and a much bigger cranial capacity,

so they have bigger brains than a domestic cat.

> Over the years we've developed

methods to distinguish between

wildcats and domestic cats,

for example we can look at various features of the skull,

including the size of the brain.

Here we have a wildcat skull

and here we have a domestic cat skull

and if you look at the distance across the brain case here,

you can see it's much greater in the wildcat

than it is in the domestic cat.

So the poor old domestic cat is rather pea-brained

compared with the very clever wildcat.

But there’s another character which, traditionally in the past,

has been used to distinguish between wildcats and domestic cats,

and that’s if you take the jaws

- and you stand wildcat jaws up, they’ll stand up,

but if you try and do the same thing with a domestic cat’s jaws,

they fall down.

And this is because

there’s a little bony piece here

called the Angular Process

and it’s much more highly developed in a wildcat than it is in a domestic cat.

There are larger muscles pulling on this because it has a tougher diet basically.

And this is why the wildcat jaw bone will stand up.

> The last thing is that a Scottish Wildcat or wildcats have

a very short intestinal tract.

They still eat very wild prey,

whereas we over thousands of years have domesticated

domestic cats to eat biscuits and tinned food

and their insides have had to adapt to be able to cope with that.

When it comes to spotting the wildcat with the naked eye, or with binoculars

or capturing it on camera,

it is this animal’s own reticence and introversion

that adds to the extreme difficulty

of photographing its everyday life in the Highlands.

However, there are six identified regions in Scotland

known to be inhabited by wildcats;

these are being targeted as zones for research and conservation.

They are known as Priority Areas and they include:

Morvern,

Strathpeffer,

Northern Strathspey,

Strathavon,

Strathbogie

and the Angus Glens.

So, just how did an animal related to the world’s exotic big cats

such as lions and leopards

end up in the far north of Britain?

The Scottish Wildcat is a descendant of European Wildcat ancestors

that colonised mainland Britain between 7,000 to 9,000 years ago.

A domestic cat is a domesticated version

of the North African Wildcat,

so that’s a desert cat,

whereas the Scottish Wildcat

is a descendant of the European Wildcat, which is a forest cat.

They have a distant shared ancestry,

they’re related, but they’re far from being the same animal.

they’re related, but they’re far from being the same animal. > It has a fossil history that goes back about 2 million years

> It has a fossil history that goes back about 2 million years

and it’s been in Britain for the last 9-10,000 years,

At that time the North Sea and the English Channel were dry land

and the animals trotted across as the forest grew after the end of the Ice Age.

Thanks to its remarkable hunting skills,

it thrived throughout the British Isles in what were then heavily forested regions

that provided ample food and shelter.

But by the early 1800s

the wildcat had disappeared from much of southern Britain;

due mainly to deforestation and persecution.

Gradually, by the late 19th century the wildcat’s territory

had been further reduced to the remaining forests and moorlands of Scotland.

Over the centuries, a mixture of habitat loss,

over hunting for its fur

and persecution because it was a predator

meant that its range contracted down to the Scottish Highlands.

So by the end of the 19th century

they were only found in the Scottish Highlands

and they were being really heavily persecuted at the time by gamekeepers.

> When I first came to live here,

they were shot and trapped all the time

- as policy!

You know, if you've got wildcats,

get rid of them.

get rid of them. Which is probably one of the reasons

Which is probably one of the reasons

that we're in the mess that we're in.

In 1840 a gamekeeper’s ledger was published from the Glen Garry estate.

Within this ledger it contained the numbers of predators and vermin

killed in the previous four years.

There were 198 wildcats in this ledger,

more than double the amount thought to exist today.

Today you would have to travel to the Cairngorms region

and points further north,

the wildcat’s last outposts,

to search for the slightest trace of this striking animal.

And even then, there would be no guarantee

that you would catch even a fleeting glance of the elusive wildcat.

Persecution with the aim of

really eradicating this species was a big problem

in the 19th and early 20th century.

I think things have moved on a bit now,

and really one of the issues, however,

we face is that domestic cats, when they go feral

and live in the countryside and create one or two problems

- particularly in relation to small game -

then it is legal for feral cats to be controlled.

Now the problem is that wildcats, they’re legally protected

and of course they’re a really endangered animal.

And there's a real difficulty I suppose in identifying

- particularly in poor light or in dense vegetation -

whether somebody is about to shoot a feral cat,

particularly a stripy feral cat,

or a wildcat.

So mistakes can be made in predator control.

> What we’re trying to do is work with estates, work with keepers,

and look at ways that predator control can be wildcat friendly.

Just being a bit more careful, being more cautious, a precautionary approach.

> There could be problems where lamping - where you use a bright lamp

to pick up the eye shine of the cat in the wild

- is used in order to control feral cats, to shoot them,

because you have no way of identifying whether the cat is a wildcat or not.

because you have no way of identifying whether the cat is a wildcat or not. > Whereas what we would be saying is:

> Whereas what we would be saying is:

we’ve found wildcats there,

what we’d rather you do is use live traps and find out what it is before you shoot.

The Scottish Wildcat is not the only big cat

to have roamed the British countryside in former time.

Eurasian Lynx – the third largest predator in Europe

– also made its home in the rugged, forested countryside of ancient Britain.

The lynxes are a group of medium sized cats

that all have pretty much the same sort of body plan

- they’ve got short stubby tails,

usually got quite an obvious facial ruff going on

and they’ve got these diagnostic tips to the ears as well,

these little ear tufts.

There are four species of lynx found throughout the world,

there’s two in North America - the Bobcat and the Canada Lynx

- we’ve got the Iberian Lynx living in Spain and Portugal

and we’ve got the Eurasian Lynx

which was found much more widely across Europe and Northern Asia.

It became extinct in the 8th century

for reasons similar to the more gradual demise of the wildcat

for reasons similar to the more gradual demise of the wildcat – among them, deforestation and persecution.

– among them, deforestation and persecution.

In the British Isles, we deforested very early and very severely.

By a few centuries ago

we were down to just 4 or 5% woodland cover,

and so an animal that needs huge home ranges,

mostly wooded, full of deer,

that’s a big problem,

and of course there would probably also have been over hunting

for its fur and persecuting it as a predator.

Since its extinction however,

particularly over the course of the last 100 years or so,

Scotland in particular has begun to reforest

- we’ve now got about 4 times as much woodland cover now

as we did 100 years ago.

And the deer populations have also increased and expanded,

and in some cases, really high densities.

So there’s been an increasing discussion

about reintroducing our long lost cat, the Eurasian Lynx.

As societies begin to better understand the benefits

of conservation and the safeguarding of species,

the exchange of information and good practice

can assist in preserving endangered animals.

Take, for instance,

the successful reintroduction of the Iberian Lynx in Spain and Portugal.

In 2002 there were approximately 100 lynxes

in the southern regions of those countries

a number that included just 25 breeding females.

a number that included just 25 breeding females. Today there are over 400.

Today there are over 400.

Such reintroductions have been hailed as solid successes

resulting in applications for licenses

to reintroduce the Eurasian Lynx in the United Kingdom.

The UK is far behind the rest of Europe with its rewilding release programmes,

mainly because we don’t have predators within the UK,

you know, we haven’t grown up with

bears, wolves, lynx, even beavers and things like that.

bears, wolves, lynx, even beavers and things like that. As a nation, we’ll find it very hard to live alongside those types of creatures

As a nation, we’ll find it very hard to live alongside those types of creatures

because we have this view

that lynx are going to come and take our children in the middle of the night,

or they’re going to rampage farms and take all the livestock.

And that’s just not true.

And that’s just not true. > Partly because the lynx died out so long ago in this country,

> Partly because the lynx died out so long ago in this country,

and partly I guess because there’s not a strong cultural connection with lynx

- you know, we don’t have any nursery rhymes or old folk tales

about lynx in the way that we do wolves

- then actually most people are really quite unaware of the lynx

and don’t know that much about its ecology.

It’s not an animal that we’re very familiar with;

whereas the average person in the street knows what a wolf is

and knows that they hunt in packs and that they howl and they eat deer,

there’s much less certainty I think in the population about the Eurasian Lynx.

In dense forests the solitary lynx prefers to feed on Roe Deer.

Thus its reintroduction would also help maintain appropriate numbers

of an animal that prevents the natural regeneration of trees

through its intensive browsing of leaves.

Lynx are very much looking for small to medium sized woodland deer,

especially Roe Deer, that’s their number one prey,

but they can take bigger animals.

In some parts of central Europe, they’re taking Chamois,

in the north of Scandinavia they’re taking Reindeer,

and in some parts of Eastern Europe they’re taking Red Deer,

which are really quite sizeable animals.

So there’s very little dietary overlap between wildcats and Eurasian Lynx,

they’re quite separate food niches.

> There are wildcats - “gato montés” in Spanish -

in Spain and there is the Iberian Lynx

There’s quite a lot of documentary evidence

and in the literature

and anecdotal evidence

that lynx and Spanish wildcats live side by side perfectly happily.

> They’re not big animals,

they’re extremely shy and wary of humans

and they will always move away from them if they can.

So there’s been no recorded attacks by lynx on humans in Europe.

There is, however, a risk to livestock.

They do kill sheep,

but in some landscapes that are probably more reminiscent

of those that we have here in Scotland,

the numbers of sheep losses are pretty small

it’s pretty localised and small scale,

and actually quite controllable.

> We can actually look at cases

across Europe and go:

"well, what does data suggest?"

And actually,

the lynx's probability of taking a sheep -

it works out it's going to take about two years

before one single lynx

takes one single sheep.

And again, we're thinking,

"okay, well how many lynx are there going to be?"

The chances are, to begin with,

it's only going to be five or six,

it's like a handful.

So you might expect less than five -

less than five sheep...

killed in a year.

Of all the reintroductions of the lynx species

that have already taken place in European countries,

most have proved hugely successful

in both wildlife and public opinion terms.

Such successes give us cause for optimism

in the efforts to save the Scottish Wildcat.

Reintroducing large predators

to human environments

is not easy,

it’s not straightforward.

It’s a lot easier to do a lynx reintroduction badly

than to do it well

and there are examples from around Europe of lynx reintroductions

that have failed because

people didn’t speak to those people

who lived and worked in the countryside,

sat down with them,

listened to their concerns

and try and address them.

So that has absolutely got to be key to any successful project.

It’s not impossible for humans and lynx

and indeed wildcats

to all live together in the same habitat

if people are prepared to give a little.

The question remains:

why is it that the wildcat is so hard to find,

so tricky to film

and so infuriatingly elusive?

There are two main reasons:

population numbers and location.

Whilst an exact figure for the number of extant wildcats is hard to assess,

a current estimated population number is 95.

However, such figures are arbitrary;

and given the vast scale of their inhospitable territory,

an inestimable number of animals would be horrendously difficult to locate

– even if they were less bashful than the wildcat!

In recent years, habitat-loss has become an additional issue

when it comes to the preservation of the wildcat.

There are instances of prime woodland being cleared,

ostensibly for cattle,

and yet no farm animals having set foot on the cleared area.

Some believe that such a loss of woodland

needlessly and adversely affects the wildcat’s territorial range.

Right through the '70s and '80s and '90s,

Right through the '70s and '80s and '90s, there was an obsessive push to plant dark, dense, Sitka Spruce forests,

there was an obsessive push to plant dark, dense, Sitka Spruce forests,

which are very bad habitat for just about everything actually.

They are dark and lifeless.

They are dark and lifeless. Interestingly, they've helped Pine Martens by providing sanctuary for Pine Martens,

Interestingly, they've helped Pine Martens by providing sanctuary for Pine Martens,

but they've certainly blocked out excellent wildcat habitat.

There’s many, many causes for the loss of woodlands.

Not only the abundance of the woodlands and the size of the woodlands,

but also the structure of the woodland as well.

Diversification, bringing it all the way back

to the commercialised timber industry.

Plantations could have a negative impact on some of the cat species.

> If you have a glen, a glacial glen, with a flat valley floor,

there's some feeding habitat on the valley floor,

because that's where agriculture is and crofting

and there's usually something to eat there - some voles and mice

and things like that.

And then you've got the valley sides, like that,

and then you've got the mountaintops and the moors on top

- and there's precious little to eat up there.

So the valuable habitat is those long, linear valley sides

- which is precisely where the forestry has gone.

And so in glen, after glen, after glen,

huge swathes of what was good wildcat habitat

has been effectively written out of the landscape.

And I'm convinced that

that has been a really significant factor in their decline.

Sensitive forest management is to be welcomed

and indeed there is now four times as much forestry in Scotland today

as there was one hundred years ago.

Forest management also espouses a wildlife-friendly ethos;

for example, animal breeding seasons are respected.

Each morning the crew would rise early

as they knew that the wildcat was most active at dawn and dusk.

Early one chilly morning

the team discovered a thawed patch in the frost where an animal had sat.

Surrounded by paw-prints and other indicators,

including meandering trails and a possible den,

the evidence suggested that the wildcat had been in the area quite recently.

Place names often proffered a clue:

for example, the crew would rise early to lug equipment

up a hill called the Cat’s Back (a tell-tale give-away)

only to haul it all back down again after a day with no successful sightings.

After many such energy-sapping treks,

fatigue would take hold and the human imagination would take over.

The crew decided to stay and keep watch

where they had found the print in the frost.

And whilst the animal did not return,

they were not without a visitor!

Easy to imagine a beautiful, energetic, green-eyed wildcat

appearing out of nowhere,

pouncing on the mouse that scurried into view.

Alas, wishful thinking!

The main threat to the species is interbreeding

with feral and domestic cats:

with feral and domestic cats: a process termed as ‘hybridisation’.

a process termed as ‘hybridisation’.

Such interbreeding has even led to the conclusion, held by some,

that no wildcat now exists with 100% wildcat DNA.

I suspect there aren’t any

because I think that they’re almost all going to be hybrids of some sort.

Other threats – such as disease, habitat disturbance

and even being targeted as predator or vermin

– have seriously affected the wildcat population.

Wildcats face a number of different problems in the wild,

and they’re mainly caused by us unfortunately.

So, for example, they get run over

and we destroy their habitat - or fragment their habitat

- so it’s very difficult for populations to remain connected to one another.

But one of the biggest problems is caused by our domestic cats

which have gone feral,

and they’ve hybridised with the wildcat.

We think the hybridisation began because wildcats were persecuted

and by the end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century,

they were probably at their lowest population level at that time.

After the First World War when the persecution pressure was released,

the wildcats started to spread.

And because males spread further than females,

they were finding themselves in areas where there were no mates,

so this is probably when most of the hybridisation occurred.

> When a population is small and fragmented - as is the wildcat’s -

it’s easier for feral and domestic cats to come into that

and mix with the wildcat population,

to a point where very quickly that wild population

can reduce in number and die out,

which of course is the greatest threat at the moment.

In the wild, the Scottish Wildcat will breed

with feral domestic cats or hybrids

to produce fertile offspring

that are a mix in both appearance and genetic terms.

When mammals hybridise, they can have a range of different outcomes

- one they can be completely infertile,

and it can range all the way up to being partly fertile

to being completely fertile.

And the wildcat unfortunately has this relationship with the domestic cat

where it produces fully fertile young.

So once you get a young hybrid wildcat/domestic cat,

it can breed with a wildcat again

and so you can keep on diluting the genes, and this is a big problem.

Such a process could lead to what experts call ‘genetic introgression’

– an unstoppable decline in the genetic authenticity of the wildcat.

We know from other parts of European Wildcat range

that it’s not exclusive to Scotland.

It happens in Hungary quite a lot,

it happens throughout other wildcat populations in central Europe,

so it’s an ever growing problem

- and that’s happened with other species across the globe,

so there are other examples of this hybridisation issue.

> Humans outside Africa are all hybrids;

we are hybrids with Neanderthals,

so we all carry some Neanderthal genes around,

but it doesn’t stop us being Homo sapiens.

So there are lots of species, such as the European Bison

which have genes from other species,

and yet they still look and behave and breed and so on

exactly like European Bison or whatever.

So as long as the level of hybridisation is low,

there’s no reason why wildcats can’t survive

and continue to look like wildcats into the future.

Little is known about the Scottish Wildcat’s

early lifespan in the British Isles.

Few written or documented mentions exist

and so one must turn to the vagaries of legend and fancies of folklore

to gain some insight into the animal’s standing in tradition.

And even then,

any such record may be riddled with hyperbole and embellishment.

British storytelling is a synthesis

of Celtic, Scandinavian, Cumbric and Northumbrian influences.

And of all these influences,

the Highland strongholds may well have witnessed

the least impact upon an invigorating oral tradition.

The cat was a powerful totem of many tribes.

Indeed the Scottish place name ‘Caithness’

is named from the Clan of Catti, or cat-people.

And in Ireland the hero Fionn fought the ‘cat-heads’

– a warrior tribe who wore cat-skin on their heads when heading into battle.

So, as often as not, some deep-rooted integrity will out

and with much digging and sturdy revision,

tiny essences of truth will emerge from these muscular word-images

and age-old, capricious tales.

And when they do so, a tiny bell chimes deep in our subconscious.

Cait Sith is a character

that appears in Scots, Irish, Welsh and English traditional tales,

that appears in Scots, Irish, Welsh and English traditional tales, Such slippery, leftover scraps of story

Such slippery, leftover scraps of story

undoubtedly reveal a sliver of meaning and a trace of reason

that enlighten us about its origins in some ancient,

probably much longer, story inspired by the past-prevalence of Scottish Wildcats.

A repeated, and therefore fairly dependable, description of Cait Sith

shows it to be a large black cat with a white spot on its chest.

And as with all such characterizations,

it was more than likely inspired by a real animal.

More down to earth, and much more recent,

is the officially documented story behind the Kellas Cat of our age.

This small, black cat was named after the village of Kellas in Moray,

where it was caught in a snare by a gamekeeper in 1984.

Though not a formal breed of cat,

it is a locally-adapted hybrid between a domestic and wildcat.

In the 1980’s, there was a widespread phenomenon

called the Kellas Cat which received a lot of publicity.

At the time people were saying they might be a new species

or a new sub-species of cat or something.

But we wanted to have a look at them in detail.

So we analysed them in exactly the same way that we would a wildcat

and we found that in fact by looking at the skulls

they had a range of characters

which reflected the kind of range of characters

you see in hybrid cats in Scotland.

When examined closely,

one Kellas cat was found to be a melanistic wildcat

– in other words it had very dark skin and hair

because it has a higher than normal level of melanin.

Our conclusion was that they were mostly hybrid wildcats,

but they had the sort of dark fur,

the melanistic fur which you also find in domestic cats.

Except for one particular cat,

which looked as if it could actually have been a melanistic wildcat.

The idea that there was in folklore

a black wildcat or a mythical black cat out there

certainly could have some substance.

Given that hybridisation has only occurred

probably intensively in the last 100 years,

it seems less likely that it’s because of a hybrid,

so I think it could be that there were

just a small number of melanistic wildcats.

Several British zoos and wildlife centres

are also involved in helping to secure and even boost wildcat populations.

The captive population is one where we want to maintain a good gene diversity

for captive wildcats, but also a good population and number,

and this is done both here at the Highland Wildlife Park,

but also at other collections,

both zoological collections and private collections across the UK

to the point where we have a population of about 80 captive wildcats now,

which we’re hoping to build up and increase the gene diversity

so that eventually it could be a population used for reintroduction.

Aigas Field Centre in Beauly, Inverness-shire,

has been one of the leading lights in the struggle

to ensure the survival of the wildcat.

Founded in 1976 it is run by conservationist and writer

Sir John Lister-Kaye.

I was always interested in environmental education,

which goes hand in hand with nature conservation;

the two really need to work side by side.

And because I had been to field study centres in other parts of the world

and there was no interpretive facility for the natural environment

in the Highlands at all in the 1960s and '70s,

I thought it would be fun to try and pioneer it here.

And people thought I was completely barking,

and they were probably right,

but I'm stubborn and I stuck to it

- and amazingly we've managed to survive for forty years.

Aigas is a long-established centre for learning holidays and study courses

that explore the full range of fauna and flora in the Highland landscapes.

It's a combination of an education programme for schools,

a nature conservation project based activity

- which keeps evolving -

and then an eco-tourism project on the top of it.

All based here on this little estate.

Since 2011, Aigas has been a leading contributor

to the programme of measures designed to safeguard the future

of the Scottish Wildcat.

Nature conservation simply hasn’t been on the political agenda.

In fact it’s been starved really very badly.

It’s been very difficult to get the Government fired up

to do something about Scottish Wildcats.

So when, finally, there was genuine interest at Government level,

I thought, “this is good news and it needs supporting”.

We opted for captive breeding because that is what is so urgently needed.

And while some of the scientists are out there monitoring habitat

and assessing prey

and doing educational projects and things,

we can get on actually producing a stock of captive bred wildcats

which potentially will be suitable for release one day.

As a result of excellent care, patience and knowledge,

Aigas Field Centre now has two breeding pairs of wildcats.

And, appropriately, these young animals have Scottish names

– Hamish and Tanna,

Isla and Coll.

All the cats within the captive breeding project have to be genetically tested

to find out their purity.

Thankfully our cats are over the threshold, which is above 75%

- so ours sit between 88 and 89% -

and that means that they can go on to breed and hopefully

produce good offspring that can then be moved around the captive population

and over time the diversity of those genetics will increase.

> So on top of the physical and mental stimulations that we’ll have to do

with the captive population to prepare them

for future release from the captive environment,

we also have to look at the release sites and make sure

that those have the right resources that could hold reintroduced populations.

So further down the line

we will carry out prey surveys, habitat surveys, threat surveys

and ensure that any potential release sites

are designed in such a way or arranged in such a way

that there’s potential for future connectivity between populations.

What we know is that any future release of wildcats

is going to be a very long and ongoing project,

but hopefully within the next two, three, four years

we’ll have carried out trial releases,

and that will give us a much better understanding

of the larger scale releases that we intend to do.

The weather is fine and conditions are ideal;

the search for the Scottish Wildcat continues.

This area is known locally as one that the wildcat often frequents.

The crew has been on the alert since early morning

and the cameras are on standby.

This is a waiting game.

After a search period that has lasted six weeks,

the crew has learned more about the territories

of the wildcats they are seeking.

Nicknamed ‘Lady & Angus’

there are two animals

in this particular area.

Pursuing an animal that is rarely observed and even harder to detect,

comes with its fair share of disappointment and frustration.

However, patience is not without its rewards:

for example, on a shoot during a particularly gloomy day

when morale was somewhat low and time seemed to crawl by,

from out of some lofty nowhere, a Barn Owl flashes past.

It was as if an archangel had descended

to renew the film crew’s sense of purpose and morale!

The preservation of the remaining wildcats is a two-pronged approach:

trap-neuter-vaccinate-release (TNVR for short)

is designed to reduce risks to any wildcats in the Priority Areas.

Both the breeding programme and TNVR system

need to be working in tandem if we are to safeguard the wildcat’s future.

TNVR is an effective method - that’s used all over the world -

effective method of feral cat control.

It has been proven to have much higher success than just shooting cats.

If you go out and cull cats,

all you do is create a vacuum and other cats will just move in,

and those cats might not be healthy, they might have disease.

So with TNVR, you’re creating a healthy, stable population of feral cats

that cannot breed, and they cannot breed with wildcats,

so they are what we call wildcat friendly feral cats.

The system works like this:

a feral cat is trapped,

neutered,

vaccinated

and then released back into the wild.

All these are feral cats, they don’t have owners.

We make sure there are no wildcats in the area

that we might trap accidentally for example,

so we do a lot of work on the ground before we even put traps out.

I'll just pull this trap out.

Generally the cats that we're going to trap, we know exactly who the cat is

because we have a camera out for weeks, maybe even months beforehand.

We make sure that it's not someone's pet cat,

so we have photos printed of the cats, we take them round to all the local houses

and we try to find out if the cat is owned or not.

Then we do pre-baiting,

so we lock these cages open and put the food inside

and we film the cats coming in.

And only when we are sure of who the cat is,

that it's not an owned cat,

and we're sure that they'll come in and take the food,

then we set the traps - and then we start checking them every night

- and hopefully, we catch something.

We have these handheld microchip scanners, like this one,

and all you do is run it over the cat in the trap

- you can do it with the cover on so you don't stress the cat

- and it beeps and tells us a microchip number.

So if that cat is microchipped, I know it's somebody's pet.

We can find out if it’s stray and if it is, we can get it returned to the owner.

And we do various other things - and the simplest one is the food bag test.

If you rustle a food bag or a pouch like this,

a pet cat will meow at you and will know that sound and they know it's food,

whereas a feral cat who's never been owned will not know that sound

and they would be very anxious still.

We usually set traps, like this one, in the evening

around seven or eight o'clock.

The reason being that we don't want to leave cats in the traps

any longer than necessary,

so we check traps every 12 hours.

If there's a cat inside the trap we get it to the vets as soon as possible.

We work very closely with the local vets, the local vet practices,

so they know that cats are coming in, so the vets then neuter the cats for us.

We do quick blood tests on them to check whether they have any disease,

if they don’t and they’re all healthy,

we vaccinate them against common feline diseases like feline leukaemia,

which is a fatal disease for cats,

and diseases like cat flu.

So we vaccinate the cats and then we return them,

so they’re put exactly where we caught them and let go.

Generally we leave some food out

for at least a couple of nights with a camera

and we just check that the cats are fine and that they're coming back.

We give them something to eat so that if they're feeling a bit groggy,

they don't have to fend for themselves.

As the greatest threats to the wildcat are interbreeding and spread of disease,

the neutering and vaccination of other cats will aid in protecting the wildcat,

while captive bred individuals will in future be released

to reinforce the population in the wild.

Another big part of what this project does is monitoring

and the purpose of the monitoring is really to inform our conservation action,

so we need to know where are all the wild living cats,

where do we need to target our conservation work.

So what the monitoring programme does is to use trail cameras

to survey huge areas of the Priority Areas

and find out where are the wild living cats

- and that includes wildcats, hybrid cats and feral domestic cats.

Generally it happens over the winter,

and that’s because it’s the best time to find wildcats.

The cats are hungry, so they’ll come to bait that we put next to the camera trap

and the males tend to be wandering a lot more

because it’s the beginning of the breeding season,

so the males are wandering about looking for females.

We train up local volunteers,

they run the cameras for us over a couple of months over winter,

then we spend a long time going through all that data

and then we can target the trap-neuter-vaccinate-release programme

throughout the rest of the year.

We rely on public sightings as well, we get data that way.

We also get data from roadkill, unfortunately,

but we get data from dead cats to give us locations.

But trail cameras are really the core of all the survey work that we do.

She scuffs paw-prints in fresh snow

– blunted, shallow;

a low-slung sun burnishing her bridging back.

Heads north,

ranging over a netherworld,

tasting salt in the air as she slopes towards a drab sea.

It is a wide land:

once plenteous, now tightfisted –

this is no courteous domain,

no gallant land.

And this windswept shoreline will offer no abundance.

Behind, there is clamour,

voices raised,

tempers taut.

Almond-eyed,

she surveys left, right and ahead.

A salted, north-tethered wind dampens her nostrils:

amid the clamour of gulls and the lash of waves,

she turns,

raises her head to the sun,

defiantly,

and pads,

purposefully,

back to her forest kin.

All organisations involved in the preservation of the wildcat

promote responsible domestic cat ownership.

And as wildcats can interbreed with both domestic and feral cats,

there is a threat that such reduction of the wildcat gene-pool

could lead, eventually, to genetic dilution, and ultimately, to extinction.

People living in the countryside owning cats,

they can help a lot

by making sure that their cat is neutered, is vaccinated and is microchipped.

And that way, they are helping to save

this enigmatic and iconic Scottish species from extinction.

Each wildlife centre promotes programmes

that are designed to introduce and enlighten people

about the animals they may encounter during a visit.

Formal education events feature strongly with school visits

and learning programmes or children, young people and adults.

We rely on people telling us where the feral cats are

so that we can go in and trap and neuter and vaccinate them.

So we’ve done a lot of work with local schools

on identifying your pet cat, microchipping your pet cat

- getting people involved in responsible pet cat ownership,

so that they can take ownership of some of the issues affecting wildcats

and help us to protect them.

Having these evenings, people get to meet other like minded people,

so you get a sense of community about the wildcat project,

because all these people are coming to the same events together

and talking about their own experiences

- you know, how often does your cat visit, and whereabouts they are,

and some people have been watching these cats

for almost two years now on camera.

They’re very familiar with them, they’ve become quite personal to them,

and they’ve become the researchers.

They tell me now about the cat’s habits

and how often the cat’s returning

and they know a lot of information about these individual cats,

which we’ve not really been able to do very much on this level before,

have that kind of intimate knowledge about wildcats because they’re so elusive.

Public engagement of this kind is essential

if a clear understanding of the plight of the wildcat

is to be understood and addressed not just by professional conservationists

but also by the public at large.

We do a huge amount of community engagement work.

We have volunteers running the survey for us over the winter,

we have volunteers involved in the trap-neuter-vaccinate-release programme,

and we’ve had volunteers out trapping for us over the winter,

we have vets that work for us on a voluntary basis.

And these are all local people

that in a lot of cases had no idea

there were wildcats living sometimes quite literally on their doorstep.

A wider constituency of interest and action

will ensure a speedier solution to saving this threatened species.

Generally just raise awareness!

Raise awareness within communities

and make it known that

we have this amazing, charismatic creature in the UK

and it really needs saving.

> I would love everybody who is interested in the wildcat

to write to their MP saying

"I do hope that you're urging the Government to get on

with conserving wildcats".

Because people pressure!

And, you know, I'm old fashioned and I don't properly understand social media,

but I believe that

if Donald Trump can get all these tweets

and Facebook pages and whatever else,

then we ought to be able to get a few, come on! Shouldn't we?

then we ought to be able to get a few, come on! Shouldn't we? [Laughter]

[Laughter]

Whatever the fate of the Scottish Wildcat,

its place in Celtic mythology is forever established.

Within that extravagant folklore,

the Cait Sith is a fairy creature whose origin was, most likely,

inspired by the wildcat.

Within the realms of the oral tradition,

Cait Sith continues to haunt the Highlands

and like so many other such mystical characters,

continues to play out fictional adventures across the province of the imagination.

In reality, the wildcat’s future relies

not just on the efforts of the many hard-working people and organisations

that seek to preserve this spellbinding animal;

it also lies in the hands of the public at large

– and not just in Scotland,

but throughout the United Kingdom,

for this is a threatened British species.

I think the future for the wildcat is uncertain.

The positive thing is that it’s quite late in the day,

but there are now a lot of people focusing their full attention

on making sure that that species doesn’t go extinct.

Hopefully, optimistically, with all of these people

fighting for wildcats,

we’re not at the stage where we’re going to lose that species forever.

> I think there’s an awful long way to go

before we can be certain that we can save it.

The news of the wild is that there are very many hybrids out there

and we’re not finding very many good-looking wildcats at all.

And I suspect that we will probably have to use a combination

of more intensive management of the wild population

but also reintroduction of captive bred wildcats

- actually the captive bred population

looks a lot better than the wild population,

so I think there’s hope there.

We do have some good cats,

and eventually we could reintroduce them into these areas

and hopefully reinforce those populations.

> It’s a collaboration between

the work being done in-situ and ex-situ,

so there’s multiple approaches being taken.

We’re not relying on the sole strategy of the captive breeding programme

or the sole strategy of the trap-neuter-release programme.

There’s so many bodies involved

that I think it has a strong possibility and a strong potential

to be able to pull this back.

> Nature conservation in my lifetime

has always been two steps forward, one step back,

and I think that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

We have to keep making the two steps forward,

whether it’s with Red Squirrels, or whether it’s with wildcats

or whether it’s with beavers or anything else.

But inevitably, we’re going to get knocked back,

but you just mustn’t give up.

Much valuable scientific research and practical work

is currently under way to save and preserve the Scottish Wildcat

– but whatever the charismatic animal’s future,

be it survival or extinction,

its presence, whether physical or otherworldly,

will continue to forever enrich

the fertile narrative of the Highlands of Scotland.