Some 250 Pumas and 250 Black Leopards in the UK?

The idiot fringe has always been happy to throw out ridiculous population estimates for large cats in the UK. The late Quentin Rose (between threatening to sue me and asking for more information on cats) made some guesses. Pretend nu8mbers really and at two points told different reporters that there could be over 700 "big cats" in the UK and moving into suburban areas. One has to remember that Quentin's full time job was making money (unsuccessfully) tracki9ng and attempting to shoot these cats. Essex Police told me that for some advice he was paid over £300 and he offered to "track down the cat in question (a puma seen two days before) for over £1000.

Others have suggested that panthers (black leopards) have to have a breeding population of over 1000 nationally.  I remember once being handed that figure by a reporter who got it from "the best authority" -a cryptozoologist.

In the wild a leopard can have a territory as small as 10-12 square kilometres to several hundred square kilometres. With plenty of prey around the UK including muntjac, rabbits and deer of other types a leopard could move from Aberdeen to Kent quite easily the distance between  the two points 6,958 kilometres which sounds a lot but is only 425 miles. Females seem to keep smaller territories.

When it comes to pumasthe size of male territories which can measure between 58 to 386 square miles or 150-999.75 square kilometres.  We know that a male puma we had recording had a much bigger territory than the female we were also keeping an eye on. We also know that this pair had at least two sets of young.

Again, there are millions of wild rabbits, millions of deer and rats as well as birds that any cat can kill and eat and they will never go into towns or cities. The British countryside is "good living" for these cats.

We do know that they have been breeding and successfully but as DEFRA will not allow trap-radio collar-release we have no idea about mortality rates amongst the cats. I have two recent reports of large dead cats at the side of very dangerous motorways where it was impossible to stop and one of those cappears to have been a puma (report from a trusted source). On the Belgian-Netherlands motorway in the early 1980s I saw a road kill panther and the two policemen I spoke to at the next stop point shrugged and said "Yes. So what?"

We could be talking 10-15 panthers or pumas and, as they might in the wild with other cats, they would be avoiding each other if territories even overlapped but as we are talking a small number of each cat that is very unlikely to happen.

Starting in Scotland any cat could move though fields surrounded by hedgerows, through woods and forests, over hills and through valleys and many other habitats that it could hunt and rest in. Look at any map of Britain and the topographical features.

We can never know for 100% certainty but going by normal cat habitat and behaviour I would never go above 50 of any larger cat species. Look at the map above and at any point the cat could move down into North Wales or head SW to Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. And they do not live in family groups.

I have worked on this subject for 45 years day in and day out and the population of both cats as far as can be told has remained constant and in some areas are known and encouraged as they create stronger and healthier deer.

But any figure over 50 individuals from each species is fantasy.