It would be quite amazing for there to be enough animals to maintain a mating population of atleast 3 or 4 generations since then without them being seen much more frequently.
There a surprisingly large trade in illegal animals in the UK - most people will know nothing about it. But check out recent new articles about dumped snakes and giant tortoises https://eastdevonnews.co.uk/2024/02/13/east-devon-police-inv.... Local to me a man was arrested for breeding Savannah cats.
I live in East Anglia and there is at least one sighting every couple of years, often with significantly blurry photo evidence of a dark, pantherine animal, 100m+ away. It's relegated to the "and finally" segment of local news.
I don't think I believe it either but the British countryside is vast, well stocked. An animal like this could evade human contact if it wanted.
I have spent a lot of my life in deep wildernes, and the only time I saw a big cat in the wild was when I was a kid (aprox 14yo), up in mid- British Columbia (Canada), literally a hundred miles from any town.
I was alone, waiting at our truck while the family was checking if a side-road was traversable. (My dad was a big wilderness fisher). maybe half a kilometer down the "main" (dirt) road, I saw a huge cat casually walk across the road, into the forest on the other side.
It looked completely black, but likely because the side facing me was in shade. Cougars are the only big cat native to the area.
Of course my dad dismissed my account as daydreaming.
I have seen bear, bobcat, and even Coyotee in the wild. Not wolf though.
A neighbor found one dead, one time. (Dead from illness; I never heard of one being hit by a car - I think they're too smart for that.) A few other people I know were luckier, and had sightings, all of them too brief to photograph.
I'm skeptical about British big cats, but think it's plausible that (if they exist) they could remain all-but-invisible, and agree that corroboration would be likeliest by spoor or DNA, not by sight.
Edit to add: My totally amateur guess is that they wouldn't be cougars, because they scream, and I've never seen anyone reporting hearing that in the UK; and they're not likely to be leopards, because they hang out in trees, and are relatively easy to spot when they do. I'd say jaguars, which do neither, and occasionally come in a black variant. I'm still skeptical, but that it is remotely plausible - magnitudes more plausible than Bigfoot! - makes it an intriguing story.
It happens frequently enough [1] [2]. Both of those are in areas where the cats aren’t supposed to exist!
> I'd say jaguars, which do neither, and occasionally come in a black variant.
Yep, the article says that the DNA matched a leopard
[1] https://m.startribune.com/cougar-spotted-in-minneapolis-kill...
[2] https://kanecountyconnects.com/article/MountainLion-KaneCoun...
I lived in that area most of my youth (but not in the last 20 years) and was outdoors a lot. I've never seen one of these animals, and didn't know anyone that had seen one (except for the rare dead animal found in the woods, or live animal that got trapped somewhere like a farm shed in some faraway farm). They're absolutely masters in not being seen... so I don't doubt there could be a few in the UK and nobody manages to get a good look at them.
EDIT : for those saying the big cats are dangerous, to my knowledge they're extremely shy and stay the hell away from people. I would be surprised if they've been known to attack, let alone kill someone in the last several decades (they talk about that in the video, but it's in portuguese).
This was in the late 90’s though. There are certainly enough sheep and rabbits in the English countryside to support a small population of big cats.