January 8, 2025, was one of the coldest days of the year in the Cairngorms, already below -10C and plummeting. For David Barclay, a conservation manager on the Wildcat Recovery project at the Highland Wildlife Park, the day had a fairly normal start, till a message came in from one of his field officers.

Out tracking wildcats, he had just bumped into a member of the public who had said they had seen two lynx in the forest.

Barclay was initially dismissive. “I’ve worked in this field for long enough that this isn’t the first time that there’s been strange things reported so by default it goes into that category of. ‘Well, it’s most likely somebody has seen something but it’s most probably not lynx.”