A conservation social enterprise has launched a crowdfunding plan to provide safe havens for the Scottish wildcat.
The project by non-profit Wildcat Haven said it wants to develop a network of protected Scottish wildcat reserves throughout its base in the West Highlands, with crowdfunding supporting land purchases and expansion of ongoing fieldwork.
For the last seven years the Wildcat Haven project said it has worked on shoestring budgets from public donations and US supporters.
It has now unveiled an ambitions plan to help prevent Scottish wildcats from hybridising into the feral cat gene pool by neutering feral cat populations.
Working alongside landowners and local communities they have delivered almost 500 square miles of threat-free safe haven so far, a desperately needed lifeline for the estimated 35 Scottish wildcats left in the world.
As their fieldwork team prepare for another winter in the remote hills, the organisation has announced expansion plans to accelerate their current work and develop a network of reserves across the West Highlands managed as ideal wildcat habitat.
The project has borrowed a model from a long term commercial sponsor, Highland Titles, a gift company that sells micro plots of land in its nature reserves with the hook that any landowner, however small, can style themselves as a laird or lady complete with title.
The title plan is described as a light-hearted way to fund an important conservation project.
Dr Paul O'Donoghue, chief scientific advisor to the project, said linking up with landowners will be critical to creating a haven large enough to home a sustainable population of wildcats.
He said among these landscapes "we need reserves where the wildcat is the absolute priority, oases acting as strongholds for wildcat populations that can never be developed, deforested or covered in windmills".
The reserves will be reforested and managed to remove invasive plant species, creating a natural Caledonian Forest ecosystem in which wildcats can thrive and wildcat prey species and other natives will be encouraged.
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