Wildcat kittens born outside captivity in Cairngorms a ‘major milestone’

Adult cats were released into national park last year after British population had come close to extinction

The birth of wildcat kittens in the Cairngorms national park has been hailed as a “major milestone” in efforts to rescue the secretive mammals from extinction in the UK.

In footage exclusively shared with the Guardian by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), two of the kittens can be seen playing in grassland with their mother and leaping on to a fallen tree branch.

These are potentially the first wildcats to be born outside captivity in Scotland for more than five years after 19 wildcats, which had been bred at the Highland wildlife park, near Kingussie, were released last summer in sites across the Cairngorms in a pilot project by the Saving Wildcats partnership, led by RZSS.

It was the first time a predatory mammal had been deliberately reintroduced in the UK after a landmark report in 2019 concluded the Scottish wildcat population was close to being functionally extinct. This was because of population decline caused by loss of native woodland and human persecution, and interbreeding with feral and domestic cats.

While the field team have said they cannot be 100% sure of the parentage of the kittens until they have taken DNA samples, Dr Keri Langridge, the Saving Wildcats field manager, said she was optimistic: “All of them look like wildcat kittens, and the two females overlapped very heavily with one of the released males during breeding season so it is a high probability.”…

Read the whole article here.