Polecat in Churnet Valley

This dead Polecat or polecat ferret hybrid was found by a road in Dimmingsdale this weekend. According to the recently published but undated "The Mammals of Staffordshire" (Authors: Derek Crawley, Debby Smith, Helen Ball and Nick Mott) in Staffordshire this species is often found on farmland or near human habitation and can be difficult to see as they stay underground within the burrows of prey species for a few weeks at a time. The main method of surveying for the presence of Polecats in Staffordshire is road casualties! They mate between March and May so maybe this one was in search of a partner when it got hit by a car.

Polecats are a native British species. Bones of Polecat dating back to Mesolithic times (10,000 - 6,000 years before present) have been found in cave deposits.

Collins Field guide to Mammals of Britain and Europe (published 1993) says that some feral Ferrets and recent Ferret/Polecat hybrids are "probably indistinguishable on external features". Ferrets are a domesticated form of Polecats and are said by Derek Yalden in The History of British Mammals (published 1999) to have been originally bred (by the Normans) for hunting Rabbits . Documents dating from the late 12th century show that Polecats were traded in England during Norman times - presumably to hunt the Rabbits that the Normans introduced into the British Isles. These Polecats may have been the progeny on imported domesticated Polecats which were originally bred in Spain.

Polecats were extinct in Staffordshire between 1890 to the late 1980s. Their extinction, which was almost nationwide, was probably mainly due to hunting for their pelts and persecution by gamekeepers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Polecat populations seem to have hung on in counties where keepered estates were not a significant form of land management (e.g. Hereford and Shropshire).  Polecats are gradually recolonising areas from these strongholds and in some instances have been translocated into places where they were extinct (Harris and Yalden's Mammals of the British Isles, 2008). Though it is thought many extant Polecats are not pure bred native Polecats having inherited some of their genes from the Norman domesticated introductions. Gin traps, which were intended for rabbits but which also caught Polecats, were banned in 1958 and the Wildlife and Countryside Act in 1981 offered more protection to this species.

Polecat photos by Terry Eyre.

This dead Polecat was found in Dimmingsdale