Martin Milner, Lock and Load!!! or Wild West Brit-style!

Poststructural Pub
1

Group calls for probe into pumas and lynxes roaming Britain


Tue Apr 20,10:38 AM ET

AFP to My Yahoo!

LONDON (AFP) - There is “little doubt” that significant numbers of big cats such as pumas and lynxes are roaming the British countryside, with more than four sightings of such beasts reported per day, a campaign group said.

The British Big Cats Society (BBCS), set up to compile evidence that such beasts live wild in the country, called for a government-run scientific study of population numbers.

Unveiling the results of its own 15-month survey which recorded more than 2,000 sightings, the society concluded that there was “little doubt that big cats are roaming Britain”.

“The evidence has been growing and is increasingly clear,” BBCS founder Danny Bamping said.

“We are now going to approach the proper authorities to ask for their support in undertaking a properly-funded scientific study on the big cats in Britain.”

For many years there have been reports that large, feral wild cats such as pumas have been living around Britain, most commonly in the temperate Devon and Cornwall counties of southwest England.

It is thought that most escaped or were released from private zoos.

Efforts to track or even catch animals such as the so-called “Beast of Bodmin”, which has reputedly stalked moorland and attacked livestock in Cornwall for years, have proved difficult.

However according to the BBCS a wealth of evidence such as hairs, plaster casts of pawprints, photographs and video footage has been gathered.

While perhaps alarming to ramblers and the like, the BBCS added that the presence of big cats – some of which, such as the lynx, were native to Britain centuries ago – might not be an entirely bad thing.

Many scientists now believe that the country’s population of grazing animals do not face enough natural predators to keep populations under control, said zoologist Chris Mosier, an adviser to the society.

“The re-introduction of the lynx might, if handled correctly, help to balance this situation,” he said.

“With an increased wariness of, and tightening of controls on firearms and the increasingly unacceptability of hunting with dogs, the return of one of our long-lost predators may give hope to farmers and landowners.”

2

The existence of ‘Alien Big Cats’ (ABC’s -you can tell I’m interested in this sort of stuff-I know the jargon!) in Britain has been disputed for about thirty years now.
The most widely held theory/belief? is that collectors released there ‘pet’ big cats into the wild when ‘Dangerous animal’ legislation was changed in 1976.
Now if this is correct,obviously the original animals would be either be dead or old and toothless now,which either means that further animals have escaped/been released into the wild OR we have a BREEDING population of these animals! :astonished:
The BBCS have an interesting website,that is worth a look at.Also,the English ‘DailyMail’ newspaper carried a story(20/04)about the huge rise in ABC sightings in the last year.
Personally,I will not be personally convinced of their existence until one is captured,dead or very much preferably alive.
As an intersting sidetrack,big black animals-usually dogs-have been a feature of British folklore for centuries.These supernatural creatures have usually been harbringers of misfortune (remember ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’?).
Could the current spate of ABC’s be the latest incarnation in our collective unconscious of these mystery Beasts?
I’m sure that I read that there were plans to re-introduce WOLVES to Scotland!

3

Can we be absolutely certain we’re not dealing with some evolved feliform relative of Nessie? How, in fact, can we be sure that the Loch Ness beast herself is not a large amphibious cat?

4

Amphibious cat hmm..a bit like a Turkish Van?
I suppose we could leave tins of ‘Kittychunks’ around the Lochside and see what happens!


P.S;Imagine the size of the Catflap!..‘Nessieflap’? :boggle:

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Yeah, that’s the spirit!

What I found curious in the story is a quote that “it wouldn’t be such a bad thing” to have predators return to “control grazing animals.” Now, I am sure there are some wild deer left in England, but most of what I saw there were farmers’ sheep and cattle! I don’t think reduction in their assets is something they would support!

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[quote=“The Weekenders”]Yeah, that’s the spirit!

What I found curious in the story is a quote that “it wouldn’t be such a bad thing” to have predators return to “control grazing animals.”

Maybe by ‘grazing animals’ they meant the morons who consume BigMacs etc. on the street,littering as they go.

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<< grazing animals, Big Macs, etc. >>> LOL!

I suspect they meant deer and the like. We have big problems with them here in Kentucky, anyway …

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Question: If the Loch Ness Cat eats deer, does it have to answer to the Sheriff of Nottingham? (or other landowner…let’s not forget about the Magna Carta, after all.)

oh…and what if it eats Big Macs? Does this fall under Mayor McCheese’s jurisdiction?

(sorry…a little silly today…just mowed my grass…pretty sure it was just grass.)

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A similar story has been doing the rounds in Australia for nearly 60 years. Apparently, during WWII, two American servicemen went AWOL, stole a breeding pair of large cats (pumas I think) from Melbourne Zoo and released them in the mountains just north of Melbourne. The authorities caught the servicemen but not the cats. There have been regular reports of sightings ever since.

I’ve seen many 'roos and wombats in those mountains but never a puma.

No, I’m not kidding. A lot of people believe the story.

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At least they might help keep the small, yappy dog population in check.

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So, are the servicemen still on view at the zoo?

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Their descendants are. They were a mating pair too. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Australia has it’s own ‘mystery animals’.There are still regular sightings of the Thylacine or ‘Tasmanian Tiger’ (a marsupial jackal type creature)though they are thought to be extinct.Similarly to our British Big Cats,one has never been found dead or alive,only glimpsed*.
I saw a photograph of the last Thylacine in captivity,which died in the 1930’s,and it looked the saddest and loneliest animal that I’ve ever clapped eyes on. :sniffle:

*I typed those words,then remembered seeing reports a few years back of a British couple who claimed to have been attacked by a wild British Big Cat (wild?-it was Furious!!).The guy had quite deep scratch marks.
Maybe his wife just had a bad temper!! :laughing:

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The animal “experts” pretty much poo-poohed the story of a return of the mountain lion (puma) to this part of the US where they’d been officially extinct over a century. Like you said - seen but never found. Then last year one ran afoul of a train - now they have a carcass - and they still say it isn’t so.

Thirty years ago, when I was in college in Southern Illinois, the Conservation johnnies told us there were no bears or coyotes. Then school kids started seeing bears along a certain road. Safe in their AC offices the experts said it was the kids hyperactive imaginations - which I’m sure was very comforting to the guy that wrecked his little Japanese car running into one of them.

As for the nonexistent coyotes (which they denied even after several folks shot some and brought them in) the imaginary little buggers are now so widespread that they’re attacking domestic dogs and cats right on the fringes of the towns. We’ve seen three road-killed along one rural highway already this year.

Moral: Maybe these BBCS folks aren’t really the flat-earther types everyone tries to paint them as.

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“Grazing animals,” aren’t they a fairly new species that live in food courts in malls all over the world, call Mallee’s. You see them all the time just moving to and fro between the store fronts.

MarkB

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The animal “experts” pretty much poo-poohed the story of a return of the mountain lion (puma) to this part of the US where they’d been officially extinct over a century. Like you said - seen but never found. Then last year one ran afoul of a train - now they have a carcass - and they still say it isn’t so.

Where i used to live in Washington state. pumas all the time… there was one incident about a mile from my house where a little kid fishing alone by the river got atacked and for the next 2 weeks all the local farmers went out and tried to find it… not sure if they ever caught the one that atacked the kid, but they shot 2 others.

and coyotes? what the heck… those things are everywhere.

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We don’t have big cats yet in our area, but the last seven years or so coyotes and opossums have established themselves here in the city and county in southern Ontario.

Maybe it’s time to get some big cats to control the population of other species. It would making jogging/roller blading the trials here interesting, especially with those who let their dogs run on very long leashes, tripping everybody else up.

MarkB

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Emmline,your questions about the mysterious denizen of Loch Ness set my mind working (a rare occurence! :stuck_out_tongue: )- in the interests of Fortean Cryptozoology,I think that ‘Chiff and Fipple’ should mount an expedition at once to solve this age old riddle!!!
My plan is simple,but it may just work where film surveillance and sonar sweeps have failed!
What we do is man a boat with stout hearted fellows (and lady volunteers),armed with Generation High ‘G’ whistles-or Garklein Rec**d*rs.We start at one end of the Loch,blowing like billy-ho,slowly moving forwards.
The ultra high frequencies will drive the ‘monster’ ahead of us,until it is trapped at the other end of the Loch, where nets have been set up ready for it’s capture! :astonished:
Damned ingenious,what? :smiley:
The money making possibilities of the captive beast are endless.
Volunteers will need to provide their own ear protection. :laughing:

19

Well, I started thread in a somewhat humorous vein but the rise in lions here in Calaforny is pretty scary. People who feel no sense of personal threat can get very worked up in favor of their increase of numbers (including wolves and grizzlies too) but we have lost some hikers and joggers and its a messy business.

I endured a conversation with a jackhole from Connecticut defending re-introduction of grizzlies as he bragged that he “could take care of himself” if he confronted one. He was quite the mountaineer, from camping in the White Mountains of NH, and grimly assented that it wouldn’t be so bad if a few people were lost. Right. I read a lot of primary source material from 19th century California and the encounters with grizzlies were frightening, believe me. The Indians were scared of em and many bore scars from encounters, as the incoming colonists related.

We recently had this weird juxtaposition of: anti-war protestors near a weapons development facility, an injured BIG lion hiding behind some shrubbery right across the street from them, a fair amount of media about and police and animal control officers trying to figure out what to do.

They couldn’t get a clear shot with a tranq dart so after many hours, they gave up and shot him. The fact that the photo of this big cat, peering out between a man-made wall and the landscaping, was published made people feel very bad about his demise. The police have been excoriated for their choices but discovered the extent of his injuries post-mortem (he had been hit by a car) and he would have likely died anyway, just in a more slow and painful fashion. Perhaps he could have been rehabilitated at a refuge, but not for certain.

As for coyotes, they are everywhere here. They have actually driven a lot of the deer into the populated areas, I think.. It’s actually safer for deer to hide in people’s backyards in my neighborhood (and risk occassional car accidents) than to live in the wild canyon nearby. So of course, the coyotes have to get bolder, and start pickin’ off the pets and whatever they can find. You can drive along streets in El Cerrito in the daytime and see deer. I ride my bike in the canyon every day and never see deer scat, which is just weird, as I have seen it in my side yard, where they sleep at night.

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There is a way, 'enders. Probably his way by the sound of it.

Two hikers get out of the tent in the morning only to see a grizzly fast approaching. Jack panics; Jim calmly puts on his running shoes. Jack turns to Jim in astonishment. ‘What on earth are you doing? No human can outrun a grizzly.’ Jim calmly, replies ‘I don’t have to outrun the grizzly. I only have to outrun you.’