Hi Everyone,
As 2019 draws to a close it's amazing to see that the petition for the wildcats in Clashindarroch Forest is now past half a million signatures; an incredible number of people, thanks so much!
In spite of this incredible number, our petition still goes ignored by the Scottish Government, though there has been activity on all sides since the last update.
You may remember that Clashindarroch is managed by Forestry Commission Scotland, and the SNH/RZSS/FCS partnership “Scottish Wildcat Action” are tasked with protecting wildcats, soaking up £2m in public and lottery funds doing so over the last 5 years.
Shortly after the SWA team argued that clear felling was good for wildcats in Clashindarroch, their partners at RZSS announced the results of their £2m of spending, stating that the Scottish wildcat was functionally extinct (www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-46617965 and could now only be saved by giving several more millions of pounds to RZSS to captive breed them back.
RZSS have been trying this for decades, they have never released a single captive bred wildcat back to the wild, and have a population of “wildcats” so deeply hybridised they have neutered all but a handful of them as they just aren't good enough for breeding (www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rare-wildcats-neutered-by-keepers-nw3w30rkc Nonetheless, RZSS keep telling everyone they have 100 wildcats in their program and have now received over £3m to just keep on breeding cats in cages.
Of course, if extinct, then there's also no wildcat-based reason to protect Clashindarroch and the logging and wind farming can go on, which seems a handy bonus for everyone involved.
Fortunately, there's still more to this story, not least that the “functionally extinct” claim was made based on surveys of about 2% of Scotland's land mass by the same “experts” that repeatedly failed to find most of the cats in Clashindarroch and have now received £3m in funding because they couldn't find any cats anywhere else.
It just doesn't sound quite right does it?
As such, after a lot of asking questions and investigating, the legal team brought onboard by Wildcat Haven (www.wildcathaven.com thanks to your generous donations, are now preparing to more forward with action intended to show that the wildcats in Clashindarroch certainly aren't functionally extinct and remain deserving of absolute protection from development.
Hopefully, things aren't over yet, but with things moving forward very much under the guidance of WH I've decided to hand over this petition to them so they can keep everyone thoroughly up to date; I'm sure you'll receive a hello message from them in the next week or so.
As I sign off I'd like to say one more huge thank you to all 507,000 of you, and the team at Change.org, for supporting this petition over the last 18 months. It's an incredible number for any cause, and especially when the wildcat has so often suffered in the past from being rather anonymous. The wildlife and ecosystems of our planet need protection more than ever, and it gives hope to see so many people getting behind this small part of that much bigger story.
Have a wonderful festive season and new year everyone, and let's hope there's still good news to come from Clashindarroch in 2020!
Steve