Dec 23 2023 22 mins
We can tend to think sacrifice is a bad thing, a waste, but it isn't always, perhaps not even often. This is a story about how a cat helped over half a million people's pledge money to fight his cas, and may even have saved 18,068 acres of forest in Aberdeenshire.
The Scottish government and Swedish firm, Vattenfall, want to build wind farms there, demolishing the forest and the wildlife habitat in the process.
Wildcat Haven has worked to save the critically endangered Scottish wildcat for the last ten years, establishing a threat free haven covering hundreds of square miles in the remote Scottish Highlands.
At least 13 wildcats live in this forest; that's the largest single population known to exist in the world! It may well represent as much as a third of the surviving population of Scottish Wildcats.
Clashindarroch is publicly owned. Wildcat Haven have been campaigning for its protection since learning that swathes of it are being clear-felled for timber, and planning applications for a vast wind farm site covering a quarter of the forest were first sought. Wildcat Haven is very much pro renewable energy, but of course it must be the right development at the right site. In this case it is not.
This is the story of Finlay. One little Scottish Wildcat kitten who may have saved his sisters and brothers home. It would be wonderful if you can support him too, and the fight to keep his home unmolested.
And his story also shows how one being's sacrifice can change attitudes. And how it can help each of us to stand up for our own core values.
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