Photo: Sebastian Unrau | Unsplash
They disappeared centuries ago, but wildcats have returned to the forests of the southern Netherlands, local conservationists have said. The animal, which has longer legs and a flatter head than its domestic cousin, disappeared from modern-day Dutch territories in the middle ages as a result of hunting and forest clearance. The return of the animal, with its distinctive round-tipped and black-ringed tail, is a sign of the rewilding of forests in the southern Dutch region of Limburg, according to Hettie Meertens, a biologist who works for the ARK conservation group. The number of wildcats has been increasing in southern Limburg since 2013, she said, as they have moved from saturated habitats in the neighboring Eifel mountains of Germany and the Belgian Ardennes to look for new territories.
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