Forest cats inhabit the Montagne Noire in the Tarn and in the Aude. An association has just proven it. For months, she tracked this wildcat in the forests of southern Tarn via camera traps and hair traps (brushes with valerian on them that attract cats.)
This cat is a discreet, somewhat mysterious animal that live in the mountains, which hides in the forests. He probably came from the Pyrenees to settle in our region. And Maxime Belaud saw him a few times. “It’s a longer cat than the domestic cat. It can be up to 70, 90 cm long…including the tail. It is brown with a few black spots.”
Genetic studies
The young man now works for Nature in Occitanie, which has launched a major study on the presence of the forest cat with 25 photographic and furry traps. And it worked, the study was a success: 70 hairballs and 400 photos. “It’s still quite existing. When we arrive and there is a nice tuft of hair, we say bingo. We will really be able to prove that we have a cat population on the Montagne Noire.”
And the genetic studies that have just come out prove its presence. But there is a flip side to this good news. The forest cat is already threatened by hybridization with the domestic cat. The association will launch a campaign to ask the population to sterilize cats in the Montagne Noire sector.
Lots of domestic cats in the Montagne Noire
“We were therefore able to confirm, thanks to genetics, that we did have a population of forest cats present on the Montagne Noire and in the Tarn department. But we can say that if nothing is done, the forest cat is already threatened. The forest cat tends to hybridize with the domestic cat. Here, we are in a massif which includes many farms, with a very present human activity, towns, hamlets bordering the forest zone. And therefore, the domestic cats that roam in the forest will tend to hybridize, to cross with the forest cat. And the offspring of this cross will be fertile and therefore this will cause difficulties in the conservation of our forest cat.”
It is difficult to make a count, there could be a hundred forest cats in the Black Mountain.
– SM
– SM