binnenwerk 48-2-2005 - De Zoogdiervereniging

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$H:\AB-Zm\Telganger\Definitieve versies\1998-1999 ... - Zoogdierwinkel$

Bennet & van Olivier (1822) wrote (all citationsin the original Dutch) “Gelijk er voldoenderedenen zijn, om de ware kat onder de voormaligeNederlandsche dieren te kunnen rekenen,zoo meent men op goede gronden dezelve thansals uit Nederland verjaagd of voor geheel uitgeroeidte moeten houden, ...” [italics by Bennet& van Olivier] (“There are reasons to considerthe wildcat to be a former part of the Dutch nativefauna, and it is generally thought that thespecies has been extirpated from the Netherlands.”).Schlegel (1862) mentions that there isno evidence “dat de wilde Kat in vroegere tijdenhier te lande geleefd heeft; ofschoon dit niet onwaarschijnlijkis, daar zij nog heden in hetnaburige Duitschland, en in het Ardenner woudzelfs vrij algemeen voorkomt.” (“... that thewildcat actually lived in the Netherlands, althoughits present occurrence in neighbouringGermany is not improbable, while the speciesmay even be common in the Ardennes.”) And,next, quoting Van Bemmelen (1864), the wildcathas “bijna zeker in vorige eeuwen […] ons landbewoond, hoewel [hem] gene bepaalde opgavenbekend zijn. De berigten van het schieten vanwilde Katten, die men zelfs nu nog enkele malenin nieuwsbladen vermeld vindt, betreffen verwilderde[italics by Van Bemmelen] voorwerpen.”(“... almost certainly lived in our country informer centuries, although records are unknown.Reports on shooting of wildcats, which may stillbe found in newspapers, concern stray animals.”)So, there is nothing new under the sun.The comprehensive Dutch mammal handbookby IJsseling & Scheygrond (1943) does not addany further information on wildcats to the 19thcentury sources. Thissen & Hollander (1996) donot include the wildcat in their review of the statusof mammals in the Netherlands since 1800.Thus we have not been able to identify anyrecords about the occurrence of the wildcat in theNetherlands between Roman times up to 1950.This is an indication that the wildcat did not occurin the Netherlands in post-Roman times. Adifferent approach to the subject, that of undertakinga study on place names associated withwildcats (as has been done for beavers, badgersand otters by Van Wijngaarden (1966) and VanWijngaarden & Van de Peppel (1964, 1970))does not seem very useful because of the confusionthat would be caused by the existence of thedomestic cat. This would make it almost impossibleto attribute a place-name unequivocally to awildcat. Moreover there are cat place-names thathave nothing to do with this animal (L. Brouwer,personal communication).Much has been published on the (pre)historicaloccurrence and disappearance from theNetherlands of other mammal species of interest,like the beaver (Castor fiber), the otter (Lutra lutra),the lynx (Lynx lynx), the wolf (Canis lupus),the brown bear (Ursus arctos), and the wild boar(Sus scrofa) (see: van Wijngaarden 1966, vanWijngaarden & van de Peppel 1970, de Rijk1987, Pelzers 1988, Verhagen 1989, van deVeen & Lardinois 1991, Mulder 1992, Ervynck1993). It is remarkable that wildcat was neverdiscussed in the debate about the (re)introductionof carnivores, such as the wolf and the lynx,in the Netherlands. Some of these species havenow been purposefully re-introduced into theNetherlands.In Germany the remains of wildcats from historicaltimes have been found at excavations andin caves from the Middle Ages, but also from the19th century (Piechocki 1990). Piechocki (1990)mentions that after the Middle Ages, massivedeforestation led to the range of the wildcat inGermany being restricted to wooded hill ranges.More recent records, from Westphalia, theeastern part of the German federal state of Nordrhein-Westfalen,show evidence of the presenceof wildcats in hill ranges, such as the TeutoburgerWald and the Sauerland in the nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries (Feldmann 1984). In Belgiumthere is evidence that the wildcat was presentafter the Middle Ages; Tack et al. (1993)mention that, in the period 1586-1783, there were64 occasions when wildcats were registered inthe bounty administration for vermin in the viscountcyof Gent, although the wildcat itself hadno bounty on its head. So the wildcat appears tohave survived for much longer in neighbouringcountries that it did in the Netherlands.72 Canters et al. / Lutra 2005 48 (2): 67-90
Possible occurrence in the 1950s and 1960sThere are a number of striking records of cats inthe wild in the Netherlands that date from the1950s and 1960s. Van Bree (1959, 1963), laterthe curator of mammals at the Zoological Museumof Amsterdam, and several other authors,have discussed these records in publications(Anonymous 1959, 1961, 1962, 1965, de Haan1970). At this time it was legal to kill feral domesticcats throughout the year. Some cats shotin this period are reported to have had characteristicssimilar to those of a wildcat, for exampletheir coat colour, pattern and a bushy ringed tail.Incited by the first uncertain observations andthe publications in this period the public waspossibly more eager to find ‘wildcats’. However,in all those cases where the animal could bechecked for internal characteristics (see above),it appeared that at least one crucial feature didnot allow identification as a true wildcat.Thus, no single record of the wildcat in the1950s and 1960s can be proven to be completelyconclusive. Van Bree et al. (1971) eventuallyconcluded that there was no indisputable evidenceto support the occurrence of the wildcat inthe Netherlands at this time. Consequently thepresence of this carnivore in the Netherlands remainedunsupported. Yet, one young tomcatcaught close to Ter Worm Castle, west ofHeerlen, in 1963 (presently in the collection ofthe Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht, Maastricht:NHM St.951 z) was claimed to be a wildcat(e.g. Moonen 1975, Vergoossen & van derCoelen 1986). However, as Van Bree et al.(1971) argued its measurements did not excludeit being a domestic cat (see also: Moonen 1975).In the text of the first mammal atlas of theNetherlands Van Wijngaarden et al. (1971) mentiononly the dubious record from Heerlen (vanBree 1963), although the reference list also citesa publication about an alleged wildcat at Haelen(van Bree 1959).It is thought that at this time there might havebeen a small, but stable, population in theRothaar hill range (Sauerland) in Westphalia,Germany (Feldmann 1984).Possible occurrence in the 1970s, 1980s andearly 1990sWe could find no records of wildcats in theNetherlands in the 1970s and 1980s. The secondmammal distribution atlas of the Netherlands(Broekhuizen et al. 1992), which covers the period1970-1988, does not mention the wildcat atall. Yet, Lange et al. (1994) stated that the wildcat,if not already present in the Netherlands, was approachingthe borders of our country. Evidencefor this statement stems from the finding of footprintsby one of the authors (A. van Diepenbeek)on 6 May 1991, which were attributed to wildcat.This was at Eyneburg Castle near Hergenrath inBelgium, just over six kilometres from the Dutchborder, south of Vaals. Broekhuizen (1996) takesmore or less the same line, speaking about “thesteady expansion of the distribution area of thewildcat in the direction of southern Limburg, theNetherlands”. Parent (1986) however, in his publicationon the current occurrence and legal statusof carnivores in Belgium and the Netherlands, onlymentions the wildcat in passing, in the contextof it only being indirectly protected by the DutchHunting Act.In the forest of Reichswald in Germany, justacross the border near Nijmegen, Gerard Müskensand one of the authors (J. Thissen) found a roadcasualty cat (NL RD-coordinates: 203/417) on 19April 1987. Van Bree (personal communication),who examined the badly damaged remains(ZMA 23.331), identified this animal as a hybridbetween a wildcat and a domestic cat.In the course of the 1990s there were rumouredsightings of wildcats on several occasionsin southern Limburg, the Netherlands. Wemanaged to trace these rumours to observationsmade in the surroundings of Vaals, the mostsoutheastern part of Limburg, by Leo Backbier.As Backbier died in 2004, we have not beenable to make further inquiries. His zoologicalarchives are not currently accessible (E.Gubbels, personal communication) and, as far aswe could find out, nothing has been published onthese observations. There are no photographs ofany wildcat traces. Since there is no physical orCanters et al. / Lutra 2005 48 (2): 67-90 73
Page 8 and 9: ecorded evidence we cannot confirm
Page 10 and 11: lack rings; the muzzle has a light
Page 12 and 13: Photograph 6. Tail of the wildcat (
Page 14 and 15: light coloured; the muzzle was whit
Page 16 and 17: could not find a territory to occup
Page 18 and 19: and mentions that it is difficult t
Page 20 and 21: Bree, P.J.H. van 1959. De kat uit H
Page 22 and 23: turschutz in Bayern, München, Germ
Page 24: ing in 2004: wilde katten, bastaard

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