recent sightings and figures

[holmes]

I have noticed that nearly all newspapers, local and national, carried a piece in september on sightings during the last 5/6 years of exotic/out of place animals(including sharks). I was wondering how this information was gathered and if there is any other official source of such like statistics? Can anyone help? I am also interested in the possible conclusions that these figures help draw. For example, are more sharks being sighted, are there more sharks or just more people looking and reporting?
As for land animals, how does the sightings figure correlate with figures on licensing/ownership/release and again is this figure just a reflection on the increased awareness of big cats and therefore a legitimacy in reporting them?

[Chris Mullins]

Hello Holmes,

The Shark statistics were gather by Consolidated "The Disney People" who had contacted several organisations including ourselves, for the promotion of thier new DVD release "The Wild"

As for the Big Cat Reports, they were collated by "The British Big Cats Society"

And Wild boar reoprts collated by "The British Wild Boar" website, run by: Dr Martin Goulding.

So I'm afraid I can only speak for the reports we've collated here at Beastwatch (UK) my friend, but I'm afraid we have no data on lincencees etc.

Chris