Surrey Puma

1959

The first possible sightings were recorded in 1959, when police received a number of reports of big cats in the Farnham area, near the Surrey/Hampshire border.

1962 and 1963

Two further sightings were recorded, in 1962, by water board personnel in Hampshire, and a third in the winter of 1962-3, a "cat-like beast" was seen at Bushylease Farm, Crondall, Hampshire.[2] When a police officer sighted the supposed Shooter's Hill Cheetah in south-east London in 1963, media interest turned to other big cat sightings.[2]

Injured livestock of 1964, police-taken paw cast and naming of 'the Surrey Puma'

In August 1964, a bullock at Bushylease Farm was found severely lacerated. Following press coverage, numerous reports of contact with the animal, dubbed the "Surrey Puma", came to the press, ranging from the fanciful to some taken seriously by the police; by naturalist and biographer Duff Hart-Davis under long article "Hoax! Hoax! Hoax!: The Fowey Skull (pictured) - Bodmin Beast or Piltdown Puss?" in NCJ column. Bigcats.org retrieved from Web.archive.org.</ref> at Godalming Police Station 362 reports were received in a two-year period. The station from this period kept a cast of a five-inch paw print on display identified as that of a puma by London Zoo. Reports noted that its size implied an extremely large specimen and that there were distinct differences between it and the alleged European prints of other pumas.[3] The investigation file was closed in the summer of 1967.[2]

1966

In August 1966, Pert took a grainy shot which he claimed showed the Surrey Puma in Worplesdon with the cat facing the camera and a longer-than-average cat length body.[4]

1968 and 1970

In 1968, a farmer claimed to have shot a puma, but could not provide any evidence. Sightings gradually tailed off, although paw prints found in the snow in 1970 generated a flurry of further reports

1970s

Albury History Society has a 1991 publication, About The Hurtwood, interviewing Hurtwood Control's ranger, Bob Ware, who claimed several sightings.[5] The Hurtwood spans Farley Green, Pitch Hill, Peaslake and Holmbury Hill.

1984

In 1984 hair samples taken at Peaslake were identified as puma. In the previous year an unclassified big cat dubbed 'alien' featured in The Archers and the Beast of Exmoor made national headlines.

1995

The Surrey Advertiser newspaper reported a sighting was recorded by police officer Steve Ashcroft in 1995 outside hilltop St Teresa's School Effingham.

2003

Detective Constable Stephen Ashcroft saw the same or similar 'up at Holmbury (Hill)' in June 2003, an area with sightings logged within the following 12 months by Peter Hayes, warden of the Hurtwood which covers the hill and the ridge to its north and west.

2004

The newspaper added residents of Abinger Common (the neighbouring woodland and farmland area) reported that in the 'last two weeks' they had seen a big cat, relying on the Big Cat Survey by the British Big Cats organisation.

2005 Lynx

A Mr Fowler, visiting with partner, Winkworth Arboretum, sent their video camera footage to a local newspaper, which they reproduced in stills. They described this animal as "gingery-brown colour, about the size of an alsatian dog but it definitely wasn't a fox". Surrey Wildlife Trust ranger Mark Havler having looked at this believed it was an Iberian lynx (lynx pardinus) and received 15 calls of sightings of similar in the two weeks thereafter, many much backdated.

Reports that year logged at the Surrey Advertiser headquarters were of more than one non-native wild cat in the Borough of Guildford and neighbouring districts: some of "spots and a bob tail on a sandy-coloured animal, suggesting a lynx", others of "no spots and a long tail, which could mean a puma"; two residents walkers' names were included in their published overview report across the years since the 1960s.[6] The reporter interviewed the Animal Liaison Officer of Marwell Zoo outside of the sightings' area to assess whether the old and new findings were linked, who explained the need for sufficient breeding pairs given these animal's wild lifespan, with say at a 1 in 99 likelihood in ideal conditions of having multi-generational offspring, if the first alleged sightings were true and he expressed doubt on the veracity of most reports.

"...If there are [black pumas] living in the wild nowadays they will be second or third generation animals so to keep this recessive gene in the wild here is unlikely, especially in Surrey. However, lynx and puma are a possibility....it would take six to eight animals living in the same area to keep a species line going".[6]

The report states that 'over 40 years ago, [thus around 1964]' it reported the first appearance of a "golden brown animal of around three to five feet in length while he was blackberrying one lunchtime" by George Wisdom, who described himself as a 'Munstead workman'.[6] Munstead is a wooded part of Busbridge noted for the vernacular style Arts and Crafts house and garden at Munstead Wood.