The Scottish Wildcat and the Iriomote
Despite our eagerness to devour reports of wild beasts at large on Exmoor, there are those who still dismiss the existence of Britain’s most ferocious mammal, the Scottish wildcat, as a myth.
“In Edinburgh and Glasgow, some people are amazed to hear that there is such a thing.
“They think you must mean a feral or stray domestic cat,” says Steve Piper of the Scottish Wildcat Association. “I tell them: ‘No, it’s a real wild animal. It’s like our very own tiger, only smaller.’ “
Smaller’s probably the only thing saved it this long. Kept it from turning into somebody’s hearth rug.
It’s also true that, if cornered, perhaps by an over enthusiastic dog confusing it with the local moggie, they can be very unpleasant, or as Piper puts it, “pound for pound, no question, the baddest cats on the planet”. …
This wary, instinctive defence mechanism has been instilled by centuries of persecution that eradicated them from England [typical] and brought them to the point of extinction early in the last century. Numbers recovered with the decline of the great grouse shooting estates after the First World War and, these days, grouse keepers are often instrumental in their conservation, as are farmers, who recognise their use in controlling the rabbit population.
I just discovered the existance of this poor little beastie a few months ago: the Iriomote Cat
The Iriomote Wildcat (Prionailurus iriomotensis; Japanese: 西表山猫 Iriomote-yamaneko), is a wild cat about the size of a domestic cat that lives exclusively on the Japanese island of Iriomote. It is considered a “living fossil” by many biologists because it has not changed much from its primitive form. The Iriomote Cat is one of the most threatened species of cat (formerly considered a subspecies of the Leopard Cat), with an estimated population of fewer than 100 individuals.
It even has a bushy tail!
Here’s the website for The Scottish Wildcat Association, and here’s the Iriomote cat’s IUCN Species Accounts page and its page on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species.
Update:
God it must be fate. I skipped commenting on the paragraph from the Scottish Wildcat story about the Grouse keepers because it only made me aggravated and I’ve been aggravated enough these past few weeks and didn’t want to have to shake and sputter and get even more aggravated trying to search for a coherent thing to say about it, but look who’s come to my rescue (incidentally, the story about the cats is from Friday, and this is from yesterday):
The Sunday Times - Why government busybodies should leave our land alone, by Jeremy Clarkson
Two years ago, a pub and restaurant tycoon called Michael Cannon bought a massive 3,000-acre Co Durham grouse moor from the family of the Queen Mother. And last week his management company appeared in court, accused of ruining it. …
In fact, having paid £4m for the moor, he invested a further £3m on improving the quality of the heather, which he describes as being more important than the rainforest. He employed more keepers, worked with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and built a small number of gravel tracks so vehicles could reach peatier parts of the estate without sinking.
The government agents talk about 4,433 square metres being buried under aggregate. This sounds like a huge amount, but in fact it’s just over one acre. A small sacrifice when it does so much to improve the 2,999 others. The fact is that since Cannon took over, the number of rare black grouse on his land has jumped from four to 150. And last year on the estate the bag was 16,054 birds; the biggest number since 1872. …
I face a similar set of problems in the Isle of Man, where I have a small piece of land. It’s listed as a site of special scientific interest, which means I must harvest the crops from the inside of the field outwards and use sheep to keep the grass down. I am willing to do this. I am also willing to avoid fertiliser, which means my turnips look like conkers and my barley is the colour of a U-boat.
But then I am told I must also allow people to go out there with their dogs, which chase the sheep into the sea and leave so much shit around the place that it scares away the birds I’m trying to attract with my DDT-free crops and escape-route harvesting techniques. That’s the trouble with environmentalists. Their love of wildlife is almost always outweighed by their hatred of the rich.
And:
Natural England, the government agency that brought the prosecution against Cannon, would do well to remember that the only reason it exists is to preserve the beauty of the countryside. And the only reason it’s so beautiful is that it’s been looked after for thousands of years by wealthy landowners.
Yeah. Natural [Insert Name of American State], if there was such a body, would do well to remember that there won’t be any beautiful countryside if they don’t let landownership last more than a generation before it’s sold off to developers who clearcut it all.
February 5th, 2008 at 1:54 am
What the enviro-nuts too often forget is that the entire land-mass of the UK has been reshaped by man. Wild highland wilderness? That’s deforestation for charcoal with which to smelt lead from the local ores, follwed by sheep once that went. Where even sheep aren’t viable (the Aussies became awfully good at woolybacks in quantity in the late 19thC) the leisure industry ie grouse and pheasant took over. Flat fertile fens? Drained by a Dutchman, Vermuyden, in the 17thC.
Of course the same thing happens in the US. 150 years ago New Hampshire was bare and given over to sheep. Now it’s 86% re-afforested because the sheep business moved west to Brokeback Mountain or wherever (dunno whether the Aussies were involved in that - not sure they allow gay shepherds Down Under). The Great Smoky Mountains were bare until re-afforestation in the 1930s. The Texas Hill Country has been entirely re-created by irrigation. Such examples proliferate once you start looking.
Nowadays large tracts of the UK are pretty uncompetitive when it comes to primary production (and, apart from wartime and its aftermath, have been since about the time the railhead hit Abilene and they started packing meat in Chicago) and so the focus is shifting to “adding value” which is what continental peasants have done since time immemorial, making their own cheese, wine, herbal remedies etc and charging a premium for the product. This of course requires buildings in which to engage in production. And who objects to the erection of these buildings? Environmentalists, allied with townies who’ve converted the old barns which might otherwise have been used for the purpose and who are damned if they’re going to have their property values ruined by local people trying to make a living.
Forget the wildcat - the vast majority of people have never heard of it, let alone seen one - the really endangered species is the rural producer. Thanks, environmentalists!
February 5th, 2008 at 2:05 am
PS Not that there isn’t some good agricultural practice that doesn’t play to natural strengths. At the foot of the hill on which I live there used to be a patch of very rough grazing, all nettles, briars and brambles, not to mention tussocky grass, none of which sheep will eat. A couple of years ago the farmer put some Highland cattle (woolly beasts with long horns, very picturesque) which specialise precisely in eating nettles, briars, brambles and tussocky grass, and which stay out there eating them throughout the winter. Looking at the field the other day the farmer’s now got a neat-looking sheep-friendly pasture, and half a dozen cattle wondering where all the tasty food has gone.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:22 am
One of my dad’s favourite funfacts in the few years after the movie came out was that the forests in the Smoky Mountains where Last of the Mohicans was filmed had been entirely clear cut and only replanted recently. In the 30s, I guess.
Interesting about New Hampshire, though. I know that most of eastern Canada was thickly forested until a bunch of uppity Scots showed up wanting to scratch a living out of this new world they’d moved to, and now most of Ontario is a wheat field, I guess. Haven’t spent much time in Eastern Canada but that’s what one hears.
I think I’ve mentioned it before but here in King County, if you have more than 5 acres you’re not allowed to touch 90% of it. Not a barn, not a tree house for your kids, can’t beat back the weeds for safety or aesthetic purposes, nothing. So basically the government has seized 90% of your land without paying for it so the Seattle townies can go for a drive on a weekend and pretend they’re driving through untouched pristine wilderness that they haven’t actually had to pay anything for. So of course what purpose is there to own more than 5 acres? Of course a land developer can buy 100 acres and clear cut the whole thing for McMansions, which I personally think is less aesthetically pleasing than this sort of thing, but then we’d never get to that point anyway since what’s the point of investing in your property if your descendents will never get to inherit it.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:23 am
The thing that bugs me about US townees is that they’re no even good at being townees. So many of them live on huge tracts where no-one can walk anywhere. Were they to live in reasonable urban densities - think Edinburgh New Town, sort of - then there might be a case for reserving land for their delectation. But since they’ve trashed so much land for their own comfort, their ain’t.
Love that picture of Blenheim. Those were the days when a general got something to show for being victorious. Poor old Petraeus won’t get so much as a bus-shelter.