Does the latest video of a black cat in the UK countryside offer evidence there are big cats roaming the British Isles? James Fair investigates
A video has been released purporting to show a non-native black cat running through a field in the semi-darkness.
Martin Burford, the man who took the video in an unrevealed location on the Gloucestershire-Worcestershire border a year ago, has told Worcester News that it was a “panther”. He claimed there was a thriving population of these cats in the area and that this one had been attacking and killing lambs.
Leaving aside the issue of exactly what a panther is (the term is vague and refers to one of two species), does the video actually shows a non-native cat such as a leopard or jaguar?
BBC Wildlife has shown the video to Dr Luke Hunter, executive director of the Big Cats Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of the world’s foremost conservation groups – and he says it doesn’t.
“It’s a moggy,” Hunter says. “The gait is very much a small cat’s, not a leopard or another big cat’s.”
Sightings of big cats throughout the British countryside have been common over the past 30 years or so, with arguably little or no definitive evidence of their presence.
“It amazes me that these claims persist,” says Hunter. “If there were big cats in the UK countryside, it would be almost unavoidable that unequivocal evidence would emerge.”
Some strong evidence – though arguably not conclusive beyond all doubt – did emerge in May when the DNA of a cat in the Panthera genus was found on a swab taken from a sheep carcass in Cumbria. In 2022, a hair found on barbed wire in Gloucestershire was identified as belonging to a leopard.
It has long been argued that big cats first became established in the wild in the UK following the passing into law of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act in 1976. In the 1960s and 70s it had become increasingly common for private individuals to keep large and often dangerous animals in cages and enclosures at their homes.
The law made it illegal to keep a wide range of named species – including all big and medium-sized cats – without a proper licence. Those people who didn’t or couldn’t give their exotic pet to a zoo, and didn’t want to have it put down, released it into the countryside, and – so it’s claimed – there has been a big cat population ever since.
Sceptics say this argument overlooks the fact that in a country that is 70 per cent farmland, there is insufficient adequate habitat in the UK or enough prey that isn’t livestock.
Nevertheless, the idea there are big cats out there is unlikely to go away any time soon – even if the latest piece of evidence, like much that has gone before it, proves nothing.