Read in Nature (and The Guardian) a report on the attempt to rewild the Scottish wildcat population due to its current high levels of domestic-cat DNA resulting from decades of interbreeding with domestic cats gone feral, even though this happened only relatively recently, in the 1960′. Thanks, rather paradoxically, to the 150 captive wildcats found in zoos and parks across the UK, more preserved from this interbreeding, by selective breeding towards removing hybrid segments of DNA from the genome of the kittens. The attempt is operated by Saving Wildcats, who have already released 19 wildcats in the Cairngorms.
“However, the project will not be a quick or an easy one”, said programme scientist Prof Mark Beaumont of Bristol University. “The idea would be to have funds to monitor what is happening in the kittens as you progress, and that costs money. A whole genome of an individual cat sets you back about $200.” The Guardian Sun 10 Dec 2023
The project is backed up by a scientific analysis of the chances of rewilding, written by
