SIGHTING: Suspected puma caught on camera in Buckley

A member of the public has caught what they believe to be a puma on camera in Buckley earlier this week.

Alexander Warrington said: “Roughly 100 yards from my location I sighted what I thought at first was a dog, but upon waiting and watching, I noticed the long thick tail, short pointed ears and very shallow round head, which lead me to believe it was a puma.”

The encounter took place just two days ago, around 12:30 PM on Monday. It comes around three weeks after a big cat was spotted diving into fields on the outskirts of Buckley, towards Mynydd Isa and Mold.

Puma Watch visited the location of the previous sighting and found multiple sets of pawprints, in addition to surveying the terrain with the Puma Watch recon drone, which allowed us to identify potential routes a big cat could take to cross the fields and hedgerows.

Big cats such as pumas are solitary with a hunting range of dozens of miles. They’re mostly spotted in Snowdonia and the Clwydian hills but reports of sightings in urban locations some distance from these areas are becoming more frequent.

Dozens of sightings have occurred in Flintshire since the summer, with many happening on Halkyn Mountain or near Pontybodkin – both just a few miles either side of Mold. Big cats have also been reported in Connah’s Quay.

As seen with Llandundo’s now-famous goats, who have taken to roaming the town’s deserted streets during the coronavirus lockdowns, it’s likely that the reduced levels of human activity over the last year is encouraging big cats to roam further from the hills into more populated areas.

When big cats were banned as pets in the 1970s, it was legal to release them into the countryside to avoid expensive rehoming costs. Owners from across the UK travelled to areas like Wales to release their cats in the remote environment, where small but significant populations have thrived ever since.

Image credits: Buckley sign by Reptonix under CC-BY-SA 1.0.