National Polecat Survey 2024-2025's Journal

Six months have passed since the start of the National Polecat Survey, and Vincent Wildlife Trust (VWT) has been inundated with sightings of polecats! A big thank you to all the citizen scientists who have taken the time to share their sightings with us; by piecing all of this information together we will have a better picture of the state of polecats in Britain by the end of the survey (December 2025).

We've had well over 300 sightings submitted to us from members of the public, mainly through our website's Report a Sighting page. As anticipated, road kill sightings were more common in the first few months of the year, but live sightings have become more common in the summer months. We're also getting many more sightings from parts of the country that previously had very few polecat sightings, such as counties in the far south west like Cornwall.

In six month's time, December 2024 will bring us to the halfway point of our national survey. At this point we will share some information about how the survey is going, and identify areas we need more sightings in. Currently, we have much fewer sightings from Wales compared to England.

Happy polecat spotting!

The National Polecat Survey is a citizen science survey appealing to members of the public to submit sightings of polecats and polecat-type animals in Britain. Polecats are an understudied and elusive carnivore in Britain, and by collecting records of polecat sightings we can build on our knowledge of current polecat distribution, hybridisation with ferrets, and threats faced. All records submitted to the survey will be used to produce a report on polecat distribution and status in Britain.

We are running the survey between 2024 and until the end of 2025. This is the fourth national survey Vincent Wildlife Trust has undertaken, and the only national survey dedicated to polecats! The last survey was undertaken approximately 10 years ago.

Vincent Wildlife Trust (VWT) is a mammal conservation non-profit organisation that has been at the forefront of wildlife conservation for more than 45 years. Our work is focused on British and Irish mammals and is currently centred around a small number of carnivores and the rarer bat species. VWT was founded in 1975 by the late Hon Vincent Weir, a highly accomplished naturalist and philanthropist. Our vision is that VWT is a catalyst for mammal conservation and our mission is to conserve threatened mammals by leading the way with scientifically sound conservation work.

Scientific evidence is at the heart of everything we do at VWT. To read our report from the last National Polecat Survey visit:
https://www.vwt.org.uk/downloads/croose-e-2016-the-distribution-and-status-of-the-polecat-mustela-putorius-in-britain-2014-2015/