What's lurking at the bottom of your garden?

Saturday, February 28, 2009, 08:03

If you go down in the woods today you're sure of a big surprise. David Clensy meets the man who has spent more than 25 years tracking down the 'big cats' of the West Country

T here's something strange in the Royal Forest of Dean. Well, ok, there are a few strange things in the Forest, but this is different.

As I stand in a dim winter glade, a few miles to the north of Lydney, I hear something – the rustle of leaves and the crack of a dry twig. I sense a presence – a flash of movement between the trees, caught out of the corner of my eye.

And then he appears. Dressed in black, from head to foot, Danny Nineham could be momentarily mistaken for a panther, as he trips across the gnarled roots, only – as Danny quickly assures me – if he'd been one of the Forest's legendary "beasts", I wouldn't have heard him coming.

Danny is convinced that the "beasts" are far from legendary. He has devoted more than 25 years to investigating reports of mysterious big cats roaming wild across the West.

He's certain that we have "considerable numbers" of pumas, leopards and panthers in our midst, and he believes it's "only a matter of time before somebody is killed".

From Bodmin to Bradford-on-Avon, Danny believes we're inundated by potentially lethal big cats, whose stealth and solitary nature allows them to remain unseen by most people.

"They're here," he says, fixing me with a sombre stare before looking over his shoulder at the darkening woodland. "Trust me, I've been doing this for long enough to know that they're all over the place.

"The days when the beasts were confined to the woods and wilderness are long gone," he adds ominously.

"They're becoming urbanised. They follow their prey – deer, stray dogs, domestic cats – into the towns, and when they get there they discover all the waste food that we leave around, nicely packaged in black bags.

"Most of the recent sightings I've investigated have been in residential streets – especially in places like Cinderford, where a town is surrounded entirely by the forest.

"The incredible thing is that the authorities don't take the danger from these big cats seriously. I believe the whole thing is covered up, at Government level, in order to protect the tourism industry.

"But I've met a lot of people who have been frightened, even injured, by these big cats. It is only a matter of time before somebody is killed.

"Everyone thinks I'm mad until they see one of these cats for themselves. Then they're much more sympathetic. I've gathered such a wealth of evidence over the years that I'm left in no doubt that they are out there."

Forty-eight-year-old Danny, who is a carpenter by trade, now spends all his time investigating the beasts – making a living by giving evening talks to societies and appearing in television programmes on the subject.

"People are seeing them all the time," he says. "The police refer people to me when they get a report in, because they know that I've become the expert on the issue.

"I have new reports in on an at least a weekly basis. It is happening all the time. But most people don't want to go public with their sighting, for fear of ridicule."

Earlier this year, Forestry Commission chiefs admitted for the first time that their own rangers had reported sightings of big cats in the Forest of Dean, in 2002 and 2005. The incidents were only made public after a request was made under the Freedom of Information Act.

"Both were observed at night using heat-activated night vision equipment, used to undertake a deer census," said Rob Guest, the Forest of Dean's deputy surveyor.

Gloucestershire police receive about 100 reports of big cat sightings in the Forest each year. But the cats are not just confined to Gloucestershire. Danny's own interest in big cat sightings began in 1983, with the first reports about the "Beast of Bodmin".

"I've always had an interest in anything mysterious," he says. "Whether it's UFOs, Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, or whatever, really.

"But it's not that easy to study the Yeti or Big Foot when you live in Lydney.

Whereas the big cat sightings were happening right here across the West Country.

"When I heard about the appearance of the Beast of Bodmin, I just had to go and try to find it for myself," Danny says.

"All the world's experts were descending on the moor to try to work out what this beast was that had been reported to be killing dozens of sheep.

"Most of the experts didn't see a thing for months. I was down there for just a week and I saw not one beast, but two – mating on top of a dry stone wall.

"I couldn't believe my eyes. That was the point when I realised the luck was going to be with me when it came to investigating these beasts. I've never looked back since. I've gone from one sighting to another, studied big cats in the zoos and learnt everything I possibly could about their behaviour.

"Around the same time I started to compile incident sheets for every time someone contacted me with a sighting of a big cat. I now have countless thousands, all filed away in my study."

Danny invites me back to his Lydney home to check out his study – which has become a shrine to all things "big cat".

There's row after row of ring-bound folders, meticulously filled with report sheets and photographs, and shelves of videos of sightings.

Every ornament and picture is "big cat" related, while in the corner is a life-sized replica wood-cut puma, which Danny uses to recreate photographs (in order to check the true scale of the cat in the picture).

His desk is piled high with letters and emails from people across the country who have had an encounter with a giant feline.

"I never set out to be famous," he says. "But I gradually became very well-known among the big cat-hunting community.

"I became a bit of a star because of the amount of success I had with my sightings."
Danny even reckons he had groupies tracking him down.

"You get women throwing themselves at you who have a fascination with the subject," he laughs, before promptly adding: "Though I was never interested of course, being a married man."

Danny is still something of a hit on the local public speaking circuit – he wows everyone from the Women's Institutes to the Round Table to the Boy Scouts, with his tales of big cat dramas.

"If I wrote a book it would be brilliant," he adds, with forgivable pride. "Only I never get the time. It takes me all my time to keep up with logging the incidents."

Sightings are not confined to the Forest of Dean. Far from it. Danny has investigated sightings as far afield as Exmoor, Bradford-on-Avon and even Wrexham in north Wales.

"The cats are getting bolder, and they're attacking more often. Dog walkers are most at risk because they see the dog as lunch. I've dealt with scores of terrified dog walkers who have escaped a big cat attack – many of them had the scratch marks to prove it.

"If people could let me know as soon as it happened, I'd be up there with my gun trying to kill the beast. But for some reason people always take days before they pluck up the courage to contact me about the sighting.

"In the more dramatic cases, they contact the police, or the local zoos, because they think the cat must have escaped from an enclosure. But often they're not taken seriously."

Danny has become so familiar with the big cats locally, he's even named them.

"The one that tends to be seen the most is Boris," he says. "I named him after Boris Karloff, because he's so big and scary. He's clearly a black panther. He's attacked and killed a number of dogs, and we've found a lot of deer carcasses and telltale scratch marks on trees.

"He was photographed very clearly in 2003, by a guy from London who was on holiday up here. The man was afraid of being ridiculed, so he wouldn't go public with it, but he gave me the photograph.

"Nobody knows how many of these big cats are out there living wild," Danny adds.
"But there's certainly enough of a population in the West Country to maintain breeding for generations.

"It's not just a modern thing. There are reports of big cats in the West Country going back to medieval times. But my theory is that the ones around today are descended from big cats that were accidentally released into the wild from Victorian travelling shows.

"I think enough got out to start breeding, and as they're top of the food chain, they've lived comfortably in the English countryside ever since."

Danny is so concerned about the potential danger from the beasts, he now puts notices up throughout the Forest, warning dog walkers.

"I always tell people that the worst possible thing they can do is to run away. It's a cat's reaction to chase anything that runs away from it. You're best squaring up to it, and then slowly stepping backwards away.

"People need to be warned, because these are dangerous wild animals," he adds sombrely, before taking a case from a nearby shelf and unveiling his collection of skulls from local "big cat" kills.

"Sheep, rabbits, domestic cats, pet dogs; I've seen everything," he says. "All with the telltale claw marks and their throat torn away by enormous feline teeth.

"Surely it's only a matter of time before one of these beasts kills a person. But I'll do everything in my power to stop that happening."

For more information about Danny's work, or to book him for a talk, visit his website at www.dannynineham.150m.com or call him on 07748510167.

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/wdp/lifestyle/s-lurking-garden/article-732345-detail/article.html