A dog walker has reported spotting a black panther or puma on Nant-y-Gamar, a small hill adjacent to the Little Orme on the edge of Llandudno.
Jan told Puma Watch: “I was walking the dog on a path by the woods on Nant Y Gamar hill, and I saw what I thought was a panther run through the woods as I was looking in through the big hole in the wall.
“The panther/cat/puma didn’t see me but I was very excited to see it, if not a little shocked.”
Local walkers will be familiar with “the big hole in the wall”, which is on the footpath leading from Nant-y-Gamar Road to the open cliffside. It offers a glimpse into the dense woodland on the other side, flushed with bluebells in the spring, which is private land and likely a haven for local wildlife.
Jan spotted the big cat at around 3pm on 30th April 2026, then reported the sighting to Puma Watch on Thursday 2nd September. This follows the launch of our Big Cat Awareness Month campaign which includes a digital billboard on one of Llandudno’s main roads, encouraging the public to share any unreported sightings.
It’s not the first sighting in the local area. Just a few hundred metres away on the Little Orme, dog walkers spotted a “massive black cat” they believe was a puma carrying an animal carcass back in summer 2021. And a few weeks earlier, a suspected lynx was caught on video crossing a country lane near Llandudno.
Additionally, a large black cat reportedly “terrified” a pair of domestic cats near Glan Conwy, just a few miles from Llandudno. Huw told Puma Watch: “A big black cat spooked our two domestic cats leaving them terrified about going outside. I caught the cat in the beam of a torch and it was definitely much larger than the biggest domestic cat I’ve seen.”
This sighting has been added to our interactive map.
*Due to a technical issue, sightings between January 2023 and June 2026 are not displayed on the map. Going forward, all sightings will be recorded on this map system and we are working to import the missing sightings.
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.
My Husband was going to work today 9th July 2026. At 2am he was walking down the path to get in his van and saw a large panther around six foot in length, with a I shaped tale walking slowly along Clee Hill Village High Street. It disappeared into shrubbery .