Wildcat woes

Published on 24/07/2012 00:00

Your article (23 July) bemoans the declining genetic purity of the wildcat.

Surely this is just an example of the workings of evolution. Maybe it was exacerbated by the Victorian culls, but you can’t be forever reversing the clock. I’m sure the male of the species enjoys a fling with a feral cat just as much as with the pure one.

Anyone proposing the same kind of purification programme on a human scale would be vilified as being a eugenicist – and, if it were applied to the Scottish situation, would probably disqualify 99 per cent of the population from being able to claim to be a pure Scot.

As for the wildcat being around for hundreds of thousands of years, the last Ice Age only ended about 10,000 years ago, so it is probably a fairly recent immigrant from Europe like the rest of us.

Peter Kent

Meikle Wartle
Aberdeenshire