Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) - Animal rights activists warn of a danger for the rare wild cats in Baden-Württemberg in view of the countless free-living or stray cats. If both species mate, a wildcat gives birth to so-called hybrids or mongrels. Increasingly, the gene pool of this protected species (Felis silvestris silvestris) can be diluted so much that over time there are hardly any real specimens, said Andrea Lehning, the wildcat officer of the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND). German press agency.
The wild cat was long thought to be almost extinct in the southwest. In the meantime, hundreds are moving again, especially through the Rhine plain, nationwide there are said to be more than 6000 copies.
According to animal rights activists, Baden-Württemberg is particularly affected. In the large forest areas such as in the Eifel, in Hesse and parts of Thuringia, there are still mostly real, wild and lonely wildcats, said Lehning. In some areas in the south-west, on the other hand, an alarming number of hybrid cats have been genetically detected in recent years.
According to the BUND, 50 percent of the cat hair found during monitoring with decoy sticks along the Upper Rhine and on the Kaiserstuhl came from hybrid specimens. According to a study by the Senckenberg Institute in Frankfurt, it is assumed nationwide that only three to four percent of wild cats carry traces of domestic cat DNA in their genome.
