By John-Paul Holden

For a long time, it has seemed as if the Scottish wildcat’s nine lives were well and truly up.

The "Highland Tiger" can grow twice as large as a household tabby and, with powerful, angular jaws made for crunching prey, is typically much more ferocious.

But impressive physical characteristics have not stopped its numbers dwindling rapidly due to factors such as cross-breeding with feral and domestic cats, habitat loss and disease.

Only last year a report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature confirmed the iconic carnivore was on the verge of becoming genetically extinct and said the population north of the Border – most recently estimated at just 200 - was no longer “viable”.

Now glimmers of light are emerging after the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) revealed that 2019 saw 24 wildcat kittens born under its management of the UK captive breeding programme – a record high since it took over the project.

The total breeding population looked after by the Society and partner organisations also shot up from 65 in 2015 to 106 last month.

David Barclay, RZSS Conservation Manager and coordinator for the UK Scottish wildcat captive breeding programme, welcomed the increases and said they could prove a major boost to efforts aimed at replenishing the wild population.

“It comes down to space, good animal care, collaboration between collections, effective management and having the right animals together for breeding at the right time," he said.

"At a time when the wild population is on the brink of extinction, having a successful, sustainable captive population that’s growing each year is a fantastic resource to have as a support tool for the conservation of the species in the coming years.”

Although they now have protected legal status, wildcats were not always popular.

During the Victorian period they were blamed for killing grouse and poultry, and became a favourite target of gamekeepers.

Today it is hybridisation which threatens the species, with fears that mating between wildcats and their domestic or feral cousins could lead to genetic extinction.

Hopes rest on a £5.5 million project which will see cats from the captive breeding programme taken to a dedicated reintroduction centre at RZSS Highland Wildlife Park and prepared for release into areas where the risk of hybridisation has been removed or minimised.

“We know that, for the wild living population of wildcats, hybridisation is one of the biggest threats,” said Mr Barclay.

“To ensure that this threat would not impact the captive breeding population, we genetically sampled and tested the breeding population in 2017.

“This has allowed us to ensure that all wildcats in the captive breeding programme are not only viable for future breeding but are an incredibly valuable resource to support conservation recovery.

“The aim of the EU LIFE partnership recovery project Saving Wildcats is to take a number of captive cats from the captive breeding programme to the project’s dedicated reintroduction centre and prepare them for release in the coming years.

“We have to make sure that the captive breeding population is big enough and robust enough so it can act as a source population for recovery and help save this iconic species.”

Mr Barclay said maintaining such a population involved a delicate balancing act.

“Scottish wildcats breed once a year and have litter sizes of two, three, four kittens,” he explained.

“They are sexually mature in their first year. The first five years of life are the ones in which wildcats are most likely to produce and successfully rear kittens.

“So having that age range well represented in the breeding population is really important. Having a majority of older cats, for example, wouldn’t be helpful for a developing population.

“It’s also about choosing animals as unrelated to each other as possible.

“It comes down to something called ‘mean kinship’ – how related one animal is to another in the population.

“Maybe there’s an animal that has not bred for several years and those wildcat genes are not widely present in the population – those are genes that you would want to introduce into the population as this helps increase the genetic diversity.”

Mr Barclay said the Scottish wildcat was by no means out of the woods but added that its prospects may now be a little brighter.

“The wildcat breeding season generally begins in April, May, June,” he added.

“I know that a couple of kittens have been born already. At the Aigas Field Centre they have had their first litters already. We hope there are many other kittens on their way at other collections.

“We are at a point in time when we can look at the captive population and say, wow, this really gives us some viable options to help support wildcat recovery in the wild.”