Thursday 6th June

I was driven to the BUND offices in Mainz by the Managing Director of the SNU, Jochen Krebuhl, who was at the lynx release. Turns out we both attended Bangor University within a few years of each other, small world!

So, now a shift of focus from lynx to the wildcat. I met Charlotte Reutter and Ines Leonhardt with the usual friendly greetings and offer of a hot beverage. When, I said tea with milk, Ines proclaimed ‘I told you so, she’s British’, much laughter erupted amongst us all.

Charlotte had prepared well for the meeting and I was confronted with a range of materials, covering the projects the BUND had and still are engaged in and various educational and promotional materials. Much of this was in German but they all helped run over the projects by providing habitat management detail for example, that could be explained as a handy visual aid and a reminder as the BUND have been involved in a wide range of projects over the years for wildcat.

The reading materials were so numerous, they are all being posted to my home address to prevent me lugging additional weight around Germany, they saw the size of my rucksacks!

The ambitious Wildcat Leap Project and related projects have been underway for a number of years with money from an EU Life Bid and money directly from government €3 million, funding the project across 10 federal states where the wildcats occur. There were three main goals;

• To establish a green corridor of 20,000 km across Germany in the long-term.
• To undertake a sustained monitoring programme for the species.
• To undertake wide ranging promotional and educational programmes/activities for the species.

The first big monitoring push took part over four winters (Jan-Apr) from 2011-2014/15, 800 trained volunteers took part in the 122 areas where the monitoring was carried out, 6,227 samples were collected, 2,888 were confirmed as wildcat of which 802 could be individually identified.

Monitoring was undertaken by placing a rough sawn wooden stake into the ground, which was sprayed with valerian (lures). Some stakes had brushes added to them as well. The basic principle is for the cat to rub itself on the stake, which its attracted to and the resultant hairs left behind can then be collected and sent off for DNA analysis.

The sampling bag comes with the following information;

• Date
• Sampler (who took the sample)
• Area
• Lure Number
• Number of hairs – the range can be seen in the photo above

The paper and the silica gel is to protect the sample from getting wet and the effects of sunlight as this can destroy the chances of undertaking DNA analysis successfully.

Although, a large proportion of the wildcats are attracted to the lures not every individual will be and other methods are being used to monitor the species including picking up road kills (more on this new project later….)

The systematic raster based grid system used to monitor the wildcats via lures helped to identify 66 additional sites for wildcat, which were either suspected sites or previously unknown. The lures are almost exclusively used by wildcats so few domestic cat samples are collected.

The project helped to establish the very low rate of hybridisation between wildcats and domestic cats in Germany of approximately 3%. However, there may be slight bias as the majority of the lures were placed within woodland. There also appears to be an Eastern, Western genetic population split, with the Western population mixing with French and Belgian animals and being genetically similar, whereas the Eastern animals don’t appear to show this mixing. However, both Eastern and Western populations show good levels of genetic variability. The large resource of samples collected by the trained volunteers has enabled a wildcat genetic database to be established.

This particular study seemed to indicate that deciduous woodlands were preferred over coniferous woodlands, though the study largely took place in woodland areas.

In order to connect and establish suitable wildcat green corridors a G.I.S. model was developed to identify key areas to target for habitat improvement work based on;

• Wildcat occurrence.
• Suitable wildcat habitats.
• The German Green Belt – the former border between East and West Germany which was turned into a nature conservation corridor by the BUND.

The target of 20,000 km doesn’t necessarily mean areas of planting, key areas are targeted and focused upon that have been identified through the habitat modelling exercise.

A broad set of habitat management guidelines have been developed for the species, which include;

• Building and leaving deadwood, root plates.
• Leaving standing deadwood.
• Removing conifer from water courses.
• No felling of older trees.
• Don’t allow the public to cut down trees and remove logs for firewood.
• Create woodland glades, rides, clearings.
• Don’t create new paths or clear existing ones.

Through, the habitat modelling exercise the government has been told where the best areas to site green bridges would be or alternatively where to put in barriers to prevent wildcats coming into contact with roads. Wildcats also willingly use culverts and ledges have been put in a number of these to assist wildcats in times of flooding. Road signs have been put up in a few places – ‘slow down for wildcats’.

The new roadkill monitoring project (2018-2019) aims to provide more detail on genetics, anatomical features, pathology and toxicological information. The toxicology is focusing on rodenticides. As well as identifying accident black spots to alert government to think about mitigation measures e.g. green bridges, this also provides information for Article 17 reporting. This is something I have to undertake myself, whereby every six years each EU member state has a duty to report on how the species is faring under the Habitats Directive.

The wildcat is well liked in Germany and as a result animals which are perfectly fine, usually kittens are taken into veterinary practices or rehabilitation centres such as Tierart by well meaning members of the public. So, the BUND established an educational programme putting up posters and other information leaflets in veterinary clinics, pet food stores etc to prevent this happening. This campaign has dramatically reduced the incidences of this.

And with that it was time to catch the train to Gelnhausen.