EIGHT wildcats are in the process of being paired up for a fourth breeding season as part of the Saving Wildcats project in the Cairngorms National Park.
It is hoped that any kittens that they have, which will likely be born later in the spring, could eventually be released into the Cairngorms National Park following time in enclosures designed to prepare wildcats for the challenges of life in the wild.
Teams have released 28 wildcats into the Cairngorms Connect landscape since 2023.
The 2025 pairs, housed at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s (RZSS) Highland Wildlife Park, are; Embo and Torr, Fergus and Morag, Mallachie and Skye, and Oscar and Margaret.
Estelle Morgan, Saving Wildcats ex-situ animal team leader, said “It is great to see the breeding season is well underway at the centre. Monitoring the wildcats during this time is very interesting – typically the females set the boundaries, meaning the males can behave quite nervously around them.
“Our animal management team has years of specialist knowledge and with the support of our partners, we are able to breed wildcats successfully. Any kittens born at the dedicated conservation breeding for release centre are eligible for release, taking the partnership another step towards restoring a self-sustaining population in the Cairngorms National Park.”
The project is working to restore Scotland’s critically endangered wildcat population by breeding and releasing them into the wild and mitigating threats to the species.
There are now increasing numbers of wildcats across Badenoch and Strathspey, a conservation boost, and most of them do not have tracking collars. Saving Wildcats are continuing to monitor the population as best as possible using a network of camera traps, the locations of which are informed by the wealth of tracking data that we have collected since the first release.
The project has also called on the pubic to assist them in their research, saying they rely on public sightings to keep track of the new and growing population.
