Friday 7th June

A short walk from the Gasthaus and I arrive at the Institute, met by a bubbly and enthusiastic Dr Carsten Nowak.

Carsten rather reminds me of an old GP of mine (Dr Gage) as he leaps eagerly from his desk pointing out areas of Germany on his map, referring to papers, other maps and species on his computer as together we spend our time cross referencing between Britain and Germany.

Carsten explains that the wildcat became largely extinct from Germany between the two world wars but clung on in the South-west, in the Mainz area and in the southern slopes of the Harz mountains in the areas with a milder climate.

It’s unknown how long the initial expansion phase of the species took before the expansion phase accelerated. It’s during this secondary acceleration phase that hybridisation with domestic cats can occur if particular sets of circumstances arise. However, the wildcats in Germany seemed to have largely escaped this predicament with approximately only 3% of the population being hybridised during the phase in which dispersal for males and females accelerates.

Carsten reiterated the East, West German wildcat genetic split, which aligns with the old Roman border interestingly. Carsten also reiterated much of what I’d read about the possible way forward with the Scottish population of wildcats, which aligns with Breitenmoser et al, 2019. Further to this he added that for re-introductions elsewhere in the UK, trying to include genes from the few remaining ‘pure’ wildcats in Scotland should be included for any future captive breeding programme. These individuals are the remaining resource of what’s left and will likely carry genetic adaptations suitable to the UK not found elsewhere in Europe.

Whilst, there are debates between taxonomists and geneticists, he was keen to point out that when considering re-introductions from scratch as it were you must try to pick animals from areas where their ecological suitability and by extension genetic suitability best fits the destination country.

The take home message though was robustly genetically test animals that you are intending to breed from, failure to do this will ultimately end in failure of the project.

We discussed monitoring methodologies, which ran over everything I’d learnt from the BUND. Senckenburg is responsible for undertaking the DNA analysis for wildcats for the BUND and for the lynx on the SNU Life Luchs Project. However, the valerian lure sticks method for wildcats didn’t work in Scotland when it was tried, though there could be a number of reasons for its failure as it has been successful in countries other than Germany. So, the method should be re-tested as camera traps are not particularly helpful for wildcat monitoring in isolation and radio telemetry is expensive. Training scent dogs could be an option as well as collecting carcasses. We discussed the parameters of a possible pilot study, which will be detailed in my report.

We then moved on to discuss the lynx. It’s thought that the species that existed in Britain is now extinct and it would be helpful to analyse any skeletal remains in museum collections to try to identify which animals might be the most suitable to return to the UK.

In terms of the feasibility of undertaking a release of lynx in the UK, he believed it was technically possible, however, as the UK is an island this presents potential problems in the future for maintaining heterozygosity and preventing bottle-necking. Possible solutions were discussed as well as an initial release strategy to try to achieve a positive outcome.

For all the highly detailed genetic discussion, as with the SNU and the BUND, Carsten was keen to re-iterate that getting a communication strategy and educational programme sorted out well in advance of any re-introduction project taking place, involving the key stakeholders was incredibly important and should not be overlooked.

I enjoyed sharing my knowledge of conservation projects in the UK with Carsten and whilst taking a break over lunch we talked through UK projects such as the white tailed sea eagle, red kite, hazel dormouse and pine marten reintroduction projects. Agri-environment schemes and yes the dreaded but necessary Article 17 reporting process.