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The Scotsman Bulletin Friday January 10 2025 #Lynx
The Scotsman
Follow
10/01/2025
Dale and rural affairs correspondent Katharine Hay discuss the illegal release of a second pair of Lynx into the Scottish Highlands
Category
🐳
Animals
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Friday.
00:05
My name is Dale Miller, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our Rural Affairs
00:10
Correspondent, Catherine Hay. Catherine, I know we're going to get into talking about the mystery
00:16
of the links very shortly, but I just want to flag the front page of today's Scotsman firstly.
00:22
And we led on projections from analysis from the University of Edinburgh, suggesting by December
00:28
next year if no action is taken, the waiting list for the NHS here in Scotland will hit 1 million
00:34
patients. That's roughly one in every five people in Scotland on the waiting list. It's a pretty
00:40
scary figure. And there were suggestions that there would need to be up to 20% effectively
00:48
operations that weren't currently on the waiting list to go through to actually clear the COVID
00:52
backlog. We know that there's 21 billion pounds of money in the budget that's going towards
00:59
trying to improve health outcomes and how the health system's operating, but it is quite
01:05
a confronting analysis and projections that have been put together, labelled terrifying by one
01:11
opposition political party. You can read that story at scotsman.com. Catherine, I think the
01:16
story that's fascinating, probably more of our readers and viewers though, is the links now.
01:22
We know that there were two that were released, we believe, and then captured,
01:28
but there's been a further development today. Can you tell us about it?
01:32
Yeah, so it's interesting waking up this morning and seeing that the police had put out a second
01:37
warning that two links are on the loose in the Highlands near Knewsie, which is the same area
01:46
where we saw two links were captured. They were spotted on Wednesday afternoon, we got photos come
01:54
through. And on Wednesday, so throughout the evening and the nighttime on Wednesday, those two,
02:00
the first two that we saw were successfully captured. We've actually got some footage,
02:05
which we can just show you quickly on those two first pair being captured on Wednesday night.
02:10
Hello, you alright?
02:32
Hi.
02:40
Okay.
02:51
Right, okay.
02:54
So just to be clear, those were the first two that were successfully recovered. And now there
03:00
are another two, as I said this morning, reported to be wandering around. So it means that at least
03:06
there's been a total of four links that have been illegally released into the wild. That's
03:12
certainly what the Cairngorms National Park Authority, which oversees the Cairngorms National
03:17
Park, which is where these animals were found. That's what they're saying. And the police have
03:22
also confirmed they believe it's a suspected illegal release of these big cats. What's quite
03:29
interesting, I was talking to some conservationists yesterday. And before I get to the theories
03:37
about the cats themselves, people have been telling me that they're clearly domesticated,
03:42
because as you saw in the video, whilst they're a little bit timid, the people who are a believer
03:49
with the Royal Society of Scotland Zoo charity, they are quite close to the animal. And links in
03:56
the wild are incredibly shy. They're very easily spooked by humans. So it's quite unusual, yeah,
04:02
if that was a wild cat, for it to be that close. The other observation is that the two were,
04:09
they were clearly together, they were a pair. And I've been told that links are quite solitary
04:14
animals. And so it's quite rare that you see them together. So it's another sort of justification
04:19
as to maybe that they're domesticated, they came from a litter, and were bred, yeah, for domestic
04:26
reasons. Now, some conservationists who are in the sector have been saying, there's obviously lots of
04:32
different theories going around about where these cats have come from, and why they've been released
04:37
into the wild. And some people are saying that there's possible a frustrated sort of campaigner
04:44
who was wanting to release links back into Scotland after they became extinct about 1,000
04:50
years ago. There's a chance that that might have happened. Obviously, we have no idea, for sure,
04:56
and the police haven't confirmed, but that is just one of the theories going around at the moment
05:01
that we're hearing from people who work quite closely together in the sector.
05:06
Because, yes, also rewilding groups have, including Links to Scotland, which is a sort of group of
05:13
three different charities working to try and push through legislation to allow Links to be
05:18
reintroduced to Scotland. They've completely condoned the illegal release of these cats that
05:25
we've seen, but they have at times expressed the sort of difficulty in getting through the
05:30
red tape, as it were, to try and push forward releasing Links into Scotland. So just to be
05:36
clear, the rewilding groups, a lot of them are wildland, where the Links, the actual estate owned
05:42
by Wildland, which is a rewilding organisation, the Links were on their estate, but the chief
05:49
executive of Wildlands has categorically said they were not involved in the release. They totally
05:54
condone any illegal releases of animals into the wild. They just hope that, like other rewilding
06:01
groups, Scotland the Big Picture, Links to Scotland, they just want there to be a sort of much
06:06
more, yeah, well thought out legal kind of process that's much better for the well-being
06:14
of the animal if we are to release Links into the wild. But yes, I think it sounds like
06:20
across the board anyone who cares for animal welfare and who works in, whether it's rewilding
06:26
organisations like Scotland the Big Picture or Links to Scotland or other conservationist groups
06:32
like the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, Scottish Land and Estates, they all are just,
06:39
yeah, very outspoken about how bad this is for the welfare of the animal, that it's just been
06:44
released illegally without much thinking and without obviously much planning, because it's
06:49
been done sort of, yeah, in secret. Now Catherine, I'm glad you brought up that initially, the vision
06:56
about the Links not sort of running away immediately when it comes into contact with
07:03
obviously the welfare officer trying to catch it, that immediately struck me. Our viewers will have
07:08
lots of questions, I mean I'm fascinated about this story as well, but do you think, and among
07:14
them maybe, you know, when did the release happen? You've touched on who or what the motivations
07:19
might have been for releasing them, why there's two on both occasions, and I'm sure there'll be
07:25
more to come out around this, but look, do you think it's a setback? Because I know there's
07:30
a push and there was almost plenty of momentum around gradually releasing some Links back into
07:36
the wild, it's probably one animal that we're closer than ever to agreeing that we might trial it,
07:41
do you think this is a setback to that? Yeah, I think just obviously with this line of work that
07:47
I'm in, I talk to people from all various sides of the debate on the Links reintroduction program,
07:52
and I can tell you that from the people who are less keen to the people who are very keen,
07:58
there's just frustration across the board because there have been very productive
08:02
conversations, very open dialogue in recent months, certainly better than what was in recent years,
08:08
and just this sort of, yeah, blast of four things suddenly in the wild, I think it's been a real
08:14
letdown for the, just for the whole sort of conversation and people coming together and
08:20
having, you know, good thorough conversations about the process, because obviously there's
08:25
pros and cons, there's worries, there's excitement, there's all sorts of different emotions about it,
08:29
can understand totally from both sides, obviously they're a beautiful animal, they'll contribute to
08:34
various, you know, parts of the biodiversity, various parts of the ecosystem, given,
08:40
you know, they eat deer, which we have a big problem with in Scotland, we've got a lot of
08:44
them, but then you can understand, they eat hoofed animals, so you can understand
08:48
our livestock farmers would be concerned, so there's just so many different kind of elements
08:53
to this debate, and it is a real shame that, certainly from what conservationists are saying,
08:57
from rewilding groups to farm groups to the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, that it's just
09:04
really, yeah, set them back in terms of what progress was being made to kind of bring these
09:09
groups together, which can at times be incredibly polarised. I think what we do know is developments
09:15
around the Lynx release are not done with yet, there'll be more for you to read around, and
09:20
hopefully have some understanding over coming days about why this has happened and what it may mean.
09:26
Catherine will bring you all the very latest, so please keep across our website, scotsman.com,
09:32
there's a section on the homepage of the site dedicated to Hayes Way, which is all of Catherine's
09:38
content, so you'll be able to read all the latest there. Please follow us on Facebook,
09:42
Instagram, Blue Sky, and go and buy a copy of the paper tomorrow, and enjoy your weekend when it comes.
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