In
this article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ms-UK-healthy-populations-leopards-pumas.html a 'big cat tracker' named Rhoda Watkins claims the UK has a healthy population of leopards and pumas.
However, when I search on Wikipedia and other wildlife/conservation sources, the distribution range of pumas and leopards does not include the UK.
There are repeated reports of big cats in the UK. I doubt very much whether they are native species in those islands. There is a possibility (however remote) that a few big cats were brought in (probably illegally and probably as juveniles) as exotic pets and then escaped or released to go feral.
Is there a viable breeding population of pumas and leopards living and thriving in the UK?
My own guess (that's all that it can be) is that the answer is probably 'no'. Certainly not 'thriving' since if that was the case, there would be more unambiguous sightings.
So I'm more inclined to interpret this as another example of modern folklore. That should be fascinating in its own right to anyone with a halfway scientific sensibility. It's just that it might be less a zoological phenomenon than a sociological one. I'm reminded of chupacabras here in the United States. This is an alleged cryptozoological animal whose range just happens to coincide with areas of Mexican and Central American settlement in the US. We have no reports of chupacabras where there are few Mexicans, but the reports multiply as the Mexicans do. Suggesting that the chupacabras are folkloric in that community and not an actual animal.
Large cats are native where I live, between San Francisco and San Jose in California. We call them 'mountain lions'. Their range is extensive, throughout the western hemisphere from the Yukon to Chile. They are known by a variety of names in different places, sometimes 'mountain lions' as is the case here, other times 'cougars', other times 'pumas'. Plus some Spanish names in South America. Same animal, different names.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cougar
They were exterminated in the eastern United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, but isolated apocryphal sightings continue to be reported in wide areas of the Midwest, not unlike the situation in the UK. Except that these sightings in places like Wisconsin and Michigan and as far east as Quebec in Canada have been accompanied by physical evidence such as hair (upon which dna tests were done) and even the occasional individual tranquilized by animal control officers. So there's little doubt that they are there in small numbers.
Young males are known to travel widely to escape territories of other males and to seek mates. Many hundreds of miles. So if there was a breeding population of these cats in the UK, young males could be expected to travel throughout the islands in a vain search for females of their kind and places where they can establish their own territories.
Here in California, it's known that there is an active breeding population just a few miles west of my home. These cats are very secretive and rarely seen by humans. But as their population increases and food becomes scarce, there's some fear that they might try to take small children or dogs. I don't recall it happening though. These are large cats that are known to take down bison in Yellowstone and could easily kill an adult human, so it's a concern. Around here I think that they mostly eat our very abundant deer. As long as the deer population holds up, they probably aren't tempted to attack game that they perceive as more dangerous.
But again, they prefer to avoid humans as much as possible so they are rarely seen. One thing that's been happening though, is that they are ranging into suburban neighborhoods in order to raid trashcans, where they trigger home security cameras. So there are lots of photos of them in people's back yards, some only a few blocks from my house. And sometimes they get cornered in the residential neighborhoods where animal control officers shoot them with darts, put them to sleep, and return them to the open space areas where they live.
So I've never seen one with my own eyes, but there's abundant evidence of their presence around where I live. In the UK, the scarcity of that kind of evidence suggests to me that if they are present, they are present in very small numbers.
Mountain lion in Montana (photo from wikipedia commons)