The Scottish Wildcat - on the verge of extinction

[Nathan]

The wildcat is 'just' a cat - it can interbreed with the domestic cat and produces fertile offspring - the DNA don't give a hoot how it survives, as long as it does. It is against nature for living things to remain unchanging.

The wildcat is a beautiful animal, but it is always going to strive to breed and survive even if it is hybridising - something it has no concept of.

The hybrid animals will probably be living closer to people, their offspring will possibly become pets and survive to breed at least once. The pure bred wildcats might run out of habitat or breeding partners but the DNA will be in a cat sitting by the fire - and no doubt looking smug.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

A wolf can breed with a domestic dog and produce viable offspring too, but that doesn't mean - to my way of thinking - that a wolf is "just" a dog. It would be a pity if wolves were lost to nature and likewise a pity for the Scottish wildcat to be lost as well, not withstanding the fact that they're interfertile.

[grizzbass]

I read about a wildlife park that was going to be created in Scotland when I visited several years ago that would not only provide a safe haven for the wildcat but even talked about introducing larger predators. I haven't been to Scotland much, maybe a total of 3 days and perhaps two weeks total in England and wales and as beautiful as I find it one of the things I missed as I hiked and traveled was wildlife. I love hiking in our national parks but one of the major thrills comes from finding a paw print, fresh scat or the actual wild animal. We have much more to do here but there are many successes in our struggles and I hope they can manage to save their natural heritage.

[Alan H]

Natural environments are tricky things for people to manage. We were at the Dundreggan estate this July. That's the home ground for a group called "Trees for Life" which is all about restoring Caledonian Forest habitat, which is what you see in Glen Affric and on a few islands, here and there, that were never logged. They have a problem.....ferns. In Scotland it's called bracken. Since the climate is so wet, ferns grow well. Because they're low in cholorphyll and other nutrients, but high in cellulose, which makes them hard to digest, not many animals eat bracken/ferns.

But wild boars DO eat bracken. So Dundreggan has fenced off a few acres and has introduced boar into that space. They're doing what boar and pigs do, ripping up the sod something incredible and eating bracken (and excreting bracken-filled poop all over the place). This is all good, but the problem is that those animals are seriously aggressive. You don't want to get in the enclosure with them unless you're armed and you know what you're doing. Having historically-accurate numbers of wild boar roaming around large parts of Scotland, unfenced is problematic...someone is going to get hurt. On the other hand, they'd provide a FANTASTIC hunting opportunity for people like Jock Scot, who operates a hunting lodge. I'm sure that Jock would be delighted to add "Boar" to his roster of animals on his property that may be hunted.

What ate wild boar, in past centuries, in Scotland? Answer....wolves. Now, THERE is a problem.