Three friends night fishing in Pwllheli have reported coming face-to-face with a “very large cat” they believe could have been a puma.
Paul Wilson, Paul Owen and Patrick Owen spotted the “brown or tawny” animal while parking their cars at Gimblet Rock, a rocky outcrop at the end of the town’s beach also known as Carreg yr Imbill. Their encounter took place around 8pm on Friday 18th March and was reported to us two days later.
Paul Wilson told Puma Watch: “Myself and two friends had turned up to do night fishing.
“We had just parked our cars when we noticed what at first appeared to be a dog of medium to large size sat upright watching us at approximately 20 metres from us.
“It was sat amongst the dune grass which was on a slope going upwards away from us. I walked a few metres towards it whilst my friend turned his headlights on to illuminate it more.
“We all then realised that it was not a dog but a very large cat that then stood up and turned away and loped away from us turning its head to look back once at us. We didn’t see it again. The cat was as big as a golden retriever.”
Any further sightings can be reported to us via this form.
It’s the first sighting reported to us from the Llyn Peninsula, though we’ve had multiple reports of pumas in sand dunes from elsewhere in North Wales. Most recently, a black panther was spotted hunting for rabbits and birds in dunes at Prestatyn beach. In September 2021, an animal matching the same description was spotted on the golf course adjacent to the beach in Rhyl.
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.
Just last month, we shared a report of a big cat in Leamington Spa. While we focus on North Wales and the surrounding areas, we often receive reports from further afield and have shared sightings from as far out as Scotland and Cornwall.
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 during the pandemic are 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.
Earlier this year, the Welsh Government responded to the recent spate of sightings and confirmed the steps they take to investigate any reported to them, including taking casts of paw prints.
A visitor to a Snowdonia animal rescue centre back in 1994 recently claimed he was introduced to four puma kittens. He said: “I strongly suspect that these were released into the wild as they had no paperwork and no money to feed or house them.
“They certainly weren’t there six months later.”
Any further sightings can be reported to us via this form.
