Frank Tunbridge, a Somerset resident who had studied wildlife for decades, has received dozens of emails and calls reporting big cat sightings in recent years.

Wildlife expert Frank Tunbridge said big cats are part of UK wildlife now (Image: Gloucestershire Live WS) Sightings have increased over the last five years, Gloucestershire Police confirm (Image: Getty Images )He said there's no doubt some of these animals will be out there after escaping or being released from private collectors.

• Would Dominic Raab’s Brexit campaign have persuaded the over-50s if he had told them that they would be arriving in the promised sunny uplands not the day they cast off the shackles of the EU, but when they were well into their 60s, 70s and 80s – after four years of negotiation and then 10 years of misery in which nothing worked as foretold (Raab shrugs off Brexit troubles, urging people to take ‘10-year view’ , 14 February)?

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) said: “Neither Natural England nor Defra have received any credible reports of wild living or breeding big cats in Britain in recent years.