On the trail of the Highland Tiger deep in remote Scotland

Nada visits a fascinating project in the Cairngorms where wildcats are gradually being reintroduced to our landscape

Nada Farhoud and Keri Langridge who uses the latest technology to track Highland Wildcats which have been released into the wild (Image: Peter Jolly)

Wildcats once roamed widely throughout Britain.

Loss of their forest habitat, being hunted for fur and more recently breeding with domestic cats, meant the future of the Highland Tiger was hanging by just a claw.

Wiped out completely from England and Wales, they now can only be found in remote parts of Scotland with fewer than 400 estimated left in the wild - rarer than Bengal Tigers.

But thanks to a reintroduction scheme our most critically endangered mammal is being brought back from the brink.

Some 19 Highland cats, also known as Britain’s tigers, were taken from a captive breeding programme and returned to the wild last summer. 

Now this small group of elusive cats are roaming wild hunting for rabbits and rodents - living their first winter in Britain’s last wilderness.

"This is our own native wildcat species," said David Barclay, a conservation manager at Saving Wildcats. "In the same way as India has the tiger, this is our cat.

“It's very special to the history of Scotland."