The Wildwood Trust’s Herne Bay park, just outside Canterbury, said the litter were born around nine weeks ago in a dedicated off-show breeding enclosure, to parents Talla and Blair. Laura Gardner, director of conservation at the trust, said the kittens will play an important role in bringing back the species from the “brink of extinction”. European wildcats are considered rarer than the Bengal tiger and giant panda, and are the only native cat species surviving in Britain, with a small population still roaming the Scottish Highlands.
But with an estimated fewer than 300 individuals left, the population has been declared “functionally extinct”. Ms Gardner said: “Wildwood has been breeding wildcats for over ten years, building knowledge and expertise of the species which has led to our amazing breeding success. “By working together with the breeding programme partners, we are ensuring the beautiful wildcat has a future in Britain.
” The kittens at Wildwood will contribute to the wildcat conservation breeding programme coordinated by The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), which has been designed to support the restoration of the species in Britain. A healthy population of reintroduced wildcats will help to restore the balance in the ecosystem by controlling numbers of prey animals, such as rabbits and rodents, and of predators such as foxes through competition for food, conservationists said. This in turn can have a ripple effect across ecosystems, by wh.
