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