The chapter on exotic cats in Mammals, Amphibians and Reptiles of the North East says the 1990s Northumberland reports included a cluster around Hexham and Haydon Bridge. It then reports that Northumbria Mammal Group's Big Cat Diaries, compiled into a 2010 book, had 134 reports by August 2010. A hundred and two were detailed enough to assign a species, and 88 of those were of a large black pantherine cat, presumed a melanistic leopard. Seven were pumas, six lynx and one a serval, and seven more were black cats much bigger than a domestic cat that were clearly not panthers.
Of the reports across the North East in the previous decade, the author says there were two notable clusters. One was Tynedale, particularly around Stocksfield and Hexham, and the other was south east Durham around Wynyard, which the author suggests may partly reflect that he lives there. The author's own view, in the chapter, is that a breeding population is statistically very unlikely, and that a video seen on ITV news in 2012 of a very large black cat was judged by the Mammal Society's chair to be an outsized domestic cat.
This entry covers a cluster of reports, with no single identified sighting, so the position is an approximate centre of the area.
Comments