Big Cat Sightings Not Just Another Shaggy-dog Story.
The Beasts of Brechfa, Bont, Boncath and Tonmawr are not alone. Animal and wildlife experts now accept that species like puma, panther, jungle cat, wolverine, wild boar and even wallaby are out there and breeding. They are among more than 90 types of non-native mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects that have become naturalised in Britain during the past century.
The Beast of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall has become a legend, but Welsh big cat spotter Phebe Cooper says Wales is also a happy hunting ground. And although people should be careful with their pet cats and dogs at night, people have nothing to fear. There have been no reports of attacks on human beings. In fact pumas can be quite friendly.
On Sunday evening Ms Cooper was told of a South Wales man out shooting rabbits in a forest near his home earlier that day. Ms Cooper said, "He was sitting very quietly watching out for rabbits when something which felt like fur rubbed against his back and breathed down the back of his neck. "He stayed stock still until it wandered off and then he turned around when he thought the coast was clear and there was a puma vanishing into the bush."
The story has echoes of the film Puma of the Andes by award-winning filmmaker Hugh Milo who was befriended by a female puma, which even drove away a threatening dominant male. Ms Cooper is among a growing number of experts and ordinary people who believe that big cats are now firmly established across Britain.
"I have done an assessment of a 35-mile radius of my home in Synod Inn and there are 28 pumas of which 24 different animals have been seen and my estimate is conservative because we know there are cubs. "You can tell them apart by their different colourings and in the Brechfa Forest we have given them all names. They live all the way along the Teifi Valley up to Tregaron and in the Preselis and the Cambrian Mountains. "In some South Wales forests we have found kills up in trees, which points to a panther and there are many of them as well."
She believes there are 200 pumas and the same number of panthers living and breeding in Wales. In addition, jungle or swamp cats prowl the Welsh borders, lynx lurk from Anglesey to the outskirts of Cardiff, shaggy brown wolverine from Pembrokeshire up to North Wales and across to the Borders. Even wallaby, a kind of small kangaroo believed to have escaped or been released in the Midlands during the 1920s and 1930s, have been spotted in Wales, although many people who see them keep quiet for fear of being ridiculed. Wallaby are, however, now registered as resident in Britain in many wildlife books.
Fear of ridicule persuades many people not to report sightings, but the Bristol-based Exotic Animals Register recorded more than 600 sightings last year across mainland Britain. Said EAR co-ordinator Terry Hooper, "When I started looking at this in the 1970s I was very sceptical but by the 1980s I had no doubt at all and even government experts now admit it's true. "We have photographs of animals killed by cars, and lots of plaster casts of paw prints, hair samples and droppings that have been analysed. "There's enough evidence to prove their existence and the fact that they have been around for quite a while."
Mr Hooper claimed officials at the Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture now accept their existence, but do not publicise it in order to avoid any possible claims for compensation. "In certain parts of Wales local farmers and historians have been reporting big cats from the 1880s onwards." Mr Hooper said he has spoken to more than 1,000 people since 1996 who claim to have seen big cats in Britain. "Most of them had never seen anything like it before, but their descriptions are very accurate and such details could only be correct if they really had seen a large cat."
Mr Hooper said EAR exists to record sightings and to educate the public on these new native species. "All reports are treated with the strictest confidence and no one contacting me need fear ridicule or un-welcome publicity." A National Assembly spokes-woman said the Ministry of Agriculture accepts that big cats are out there but says there is no evidence that they are breeding. She said, "We monitor the situation closely and follow up any reports of sightings but our advisors tell us there is no evidence of them breeding."
Publication Unknown: 15th February 2000
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