ETA: This is what I have been doing for the past two hours. Examining the evidence you said you were familiar with. And "we" is the VIOs (veterinary investigation officers) of England and Wales, and Scotland. That's my job, you know, what they pay me for. Finding out what livestock have died of. Since I don't do it all singlehanded though, I acknowledge my colleagues by referring to "we".
I'm posting this evidence because I am familiar with it, what I've posted is just a fraction and I am in two minds about it myself, but well, if you don't know the evidence then opinion is worthless. Especially on a discussion board. I'm going to keep an open mind on this and keep my ears open.
OK, let's just look at the one page of actual official information you linked to. You say you're familiar with it. I beg to differ.
What is it? "Reports received by DEFRA of escapes of non-native cats in the UK, 1975 to present day." Sounds very much like the response to an FoI request, actually. I wonder when "present day" was, because the last report is dated May 2001, more than eight years ago. If DEFRA were keeping that information for itself, it would be updated, but either there's been nothing in 8 years, or they've just made the list when requested, and abandoned it.
And if DEFRA wanted that information, it would be properly recorded. Which this isn't. It's a mish-mash of missing data and mistakes. In my opinion, someone was told to dredge up what they could find, put it into an Excel spreadsheet, and don't waste too much time on it.
If I'd been the one asking for that information, I'd have asked them to go back and do it again, but maybe whoever wanted it wasn't too critical and didn't look at it too closely. You say you're familiar with it, but you didn't even know how many "unknowns" there were, never mind spot the duplications and the implausibilities!
Now if I was given that information, and I was looking for evidence of a breeding population, I'd go through it in detail. I'd be looking for more than one individual of the same species identified in the same geographical area. But if you do that, you draw an almost total blank.
There are 27 actual entries on the table. Let's number them and look at what we've got.
1 and 2. A leopard and a clouded leopard, recorded as different species, but both loose in Kent in 1975. One report is dated April 1975, saying a leopard escaped on New Year's Day that year and was recaptured four days later. The other report is dated 1986, and says that a clouded leopard escaped in August and was shot the following January. Is this two different incidents, or an original and a later garbled report of the same incident? Who knows. But see below for the probable explanation.
3. That's Felicity. Well known case, which you showed a nice picture of. As I said, if a puma can't even hide out in that wilderness in the 1970s without leaving traces, it's hardly going to manage it in well-farmed Ayrshire in 2009, about five miles from a Veterinary Disease Investigation Centre which will get most of the dead livestock from the nearby farms for examination.
4. A caracal. Someone reported in 1993 that such an animal had been shot in Kent in 1980. No other details. It does rather look in this case as if the date in the "escaped" column should be in the "captured" column. But there's insufficient information to provide even a faint clue what that's all about, unless you put two and two together as I did below.
5. An ocelot. Date of escape, capture and report all given as 1st November 1981. Which either means there was a very specific incident, which should be traceable from contemporary news sources, or someone simply made a report that month that an ocelot had been shot in Lancashire. Can you find any more information on that one?
6. A jaguar. Apparently shot in North Wales in September 1982, with the report dated 20th September. Again I'm very sceptical of the escaped and captured dates being the same, and the first of the month. I suspect this just indicates that the incident occurred that month and was reported that day. You should be able to find this in the local press as well, do tell us what that was all about.
7. A lion, in Norfolk. Wow! At least the dates on this look specific. It seems to have escaped on 5th January 1984, been shot the same day, and reported the following day. I'm sure you'd find out the zoo or the circus that let
that one go if you looked.
8. A tiger, in Kent. Another one with slightly ambiguous dates, but it appears that on 19th October 1994 this animal had escaped and was "shot and recaptured" some time that month.
What
is this about Kent? One of the most farmed, tamed and populated counties in Britain! This is ringing a few bells.
This bell, to be exact. John Aspinall ran a very peculiar zoo in Kent from the 1970s to his death in 2000. It leaked like a sieve. I'd take a moderate bet that all these Kent incidents are Aspinall's security problems.
That really disposes of 1, 2, 4, 8, 11 and 14 (already noted as "not a credible sighting"). The note against 11 suggests this matter was the subject of a question in parliament, though you'd have to track that down as well to see what the details are.
9 and 10 are the same incident, recorded twice. A leopard cat, apparently originating in Cumbria and shot in the Borders (hmmm, seems quite a long way for a small cat, I wonder how reliable the provenance of that is), some time in 1987.
12. A puma met with some sort of an accident in Leicestershire, in early 1988. Better get to those local newspapers again.
13 and 25 are both the same case. Another leopard cat, shot in Devon in March 1988, reported in April 1988.
Looking so closely at the data, I would now agree with you that an entry in the "date escaped" column means nothing. It's often just the same date as the "date recaptured" one, and the frequency of firsts of months and indeed firsts of Januarys suggests that only a month or maybe a year was originally entered and Excel did the rest. This has just been cobbled together in a hurry by someone with better things to do with his time.
15. A jungle cat, hit by a car in Hampshire. This report specifically says that the animal escaped on 29th July 1988 and was found dead on 28th May 1989. However, again we'd need to see some primary sources.
16. Another jungle cat, listed as having escaped from Cheshire and found dead of unknown causes in Shropshire, all on 3rd February 1989. This seems to be the second one you listed in your original post. A bit funny it managed to mate with domestic cats and have several offspring, all in one day! This again merely illustrates the unreliability of the DEFRA spreadsheet, with the same date entered in all three columns.
I wonder where the Cheshire part comes in? Looking at it again, I think the "location of source" column actually records the place where the
report came from, not the place where the animal came from. Which makes it even more difficult to get meaningful information out of this mish-mash.
17. A lynx. Someone in Norfolk said they saw one. Maybe they made the report in February 1992, saying that they saw it the previous year. That's all we can tell from this, this animal is reported as having an unknown fate, but having been recaptured on 1st January 1950.
Look, this data is so scrappy, careless and poorly recorded that the best place for it would probably be the bin. Nevertheless, let's press on.
18. A lion. Recaptured in Humberside in 1991, with the report being dated 9th March 1991. A zoo or a circus? Look for the news report, I'd suggest.
19. A snow leopard. Apparently escaped and was recaptured on 29th November 1994 on Humberside, with the report dated the following day.
What sort of data sources are being used for this game anyway? It looks to me like a bunch of press clippings, some of them without a great deal of detail in them. I don't imagine this was the result of a google search in 2001, not to get stuff going back to 1975, but I wonder if some poor minion has simply been told to get a bunch of agency clippings and tabulate the results. (And don't spend too much time on it....)
20. A lynx. Allegedly escaped in Oxfordshire on 5th November 1996 and recaptured on the 28th, all got from a report dated 13th November.
21. An asiatic golden cat, A report originating in Somerset dated 15th May 1998 said one was loose some time in September the previous year. No other details.
22 and 23 are both the same case, the leopard cat you referred to earlier as being shot on the Isle of Wight. You dated that 1993, however the DEFRA spreadsheet has the report dated 1994 but the incident dated 1987. Frankly, by this stage, I'm more inclined to rely on your sources!
24 is that lynx that was discovered in London in May 2001, the last one on your original list.
26 looks uncannily like the leopard cat we already met as both 9 and 10, just a later report of the same incident.
27 is almost certailny your fecund friend from Shropshire again, but this time the information taken from a source dated 22nd November 1993.
OK, that's my assimilation of the spreadsheet. I'm going to stop now and summarise in another post.
Rolfe.
