By NEIL SYSON
Published: 03 Apr 2010
BIG cats like the Beast of Bodmin are NOT prowling Britain's countryside, it was officially declared yesterday.
A ten-year probe funded by taxpayers into sightings up and down the land astonishingly concluded the creatures simply do not exist. Experts at Natural England - the Government's environmental watchdog - were unable to explain why people in EVERY county from Cornwall to Caithnesss claim to have seen them in the wild.
But after following up hundreds of reports - including "paw prints" - not a whisker of concrete evidence was found.
Investigators decreed: "None of the sightings of the big cats has ever been confirmed." The furtive felines had been thought by some experts to be descended from cougars and pumas that fled captivity. Natural England said: "From time to time big cats do escape from zoos and other collections and are usually recaptured very quickly. We are confident there are no breeding populations of big cats in this country.
"It is very unlikely that there are any big cats at large." That includes the mysterious beast feared to stalk Cornwall's Bodmin Moor preying on sheep.
A wallaroo - a kind of kangaroo - was among sightings of other exotic species scoffed at by the investigators. Last night expert Trevor Beer, of Barnstaple, Devon, insisted: "The big cats ARE out there. Natural England are just making fools of themselves."
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2918837/Official-No-big-cats-in-the-UK.html#ixzz0k8Nvr1QE
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