A walker has reported seeing a fast-moving black animal behaving in a manner consistent with a large cat on the boggy hillside below Foel-fras, near Dulyn Bothy, at around 7:15 AM on Sunday 12th April, 2026.
The witness told Puma Watch: “I was walking uphill across the field, it is very boggy and wet. In the distance I saw this black thing moving fast making a lot of splash/spray as it did so. It was heading somewhat away from me but not directly away, it was going downhill. My first thought was that thing moves like a cat but I doubt it was. I didn’t see any tail, or any detail, just a black mass moving but the way it moved felt cat like, very low to the ground.”
Foel-fras is a 944-metre peak at the northern end of the Carneddau range in Snowdonia, approximately 10 km east of Bethesda on the border of Gwynedd and Conwy. The rugged, remote terrain around Llyn Dulyn and Dulyn Bothy — sitting well below the summit at around 650–700 metres — features open moorland, boggy ground, and steep cwm walls that would provide ideal cover and hunting conditions for a large predatory animal. The Carneddau range sits within a broader corridor of Eryri where big cat sightings have been reported with increasing regularity in recent years, including sightings on Snowdon’s Pyg Track and near Bethesda to the west.
Big cats such as pumas are solitary with a hunting range of dozens of miles. They’re mostly spotted in Eryri and the Clwydian hills, but reports of sightings in urban locations some distance from these areas are becoming more frequent. 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.
Any further sightings can be reported to us via our online form.