A new book has detailed reports of a large wild cat being found on the A169 Pickering to Whitby road, near RAF Fylingdales, while dozens of sightings of panther or puma-like creatures have been reported to police across the North-East and North Yorkshire in recent years.
Witnesses stated seeing a large cat “the length of a sheep” near the base in 2004, with one delivery driver claiming he saw the body being loaded into a car, possibly used by MoD police.
Rick Minter, author of Big Cats: Facing Britain’s Wild Predators, claims staff at the ballistic missile early warning station saw the body of the creature and that it was kept in a vault at the isolated base.
Mr Minter compared the incident to the US government’s alleged cover-up of an alien in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
He said: “It is at RAF Fylingdales that we have Britain’s Roswell moment on big cats.”
A MoD spokeswoman declined to comment on the claims, other than to describe them as “rubbish”.
However, Mark Fraser, of Big Cats in Britain, which investigates sightings, said it was possible the Fylingdales big cat sightings had been covered up, but there would be no sinister motive behind it.
He said: “The Government is not going to want people to panic – there is a lot of money in countryside industry. I don’t see why these people would lie about seeing large cats.”
Mr Fraser said evidence pointed towards isolated big cats surviving from hunting rabbits and originating from the numerous private zoos in North Yorkshire and the North-East before the Second World War.
Freedom of Information requests have revealed the region’s police forces received more than 30 calls about big cats in recent years, but Mr Fraser said police officer members of his group said the figures underestimated reported sightings.
A County Durham police spokesman said: “Reports of sightings are followed up as appropriate.”
In 1995, North Yorkshire Police opened a file on the Beast of Ryedale and drew up a contigency plan, after a pumatype animal was spotted.
Other incidents recorded by the police include one near Richmond, North Yorkshire, last December, when two sheep carcasses were found stripped to the bone.
In 2006, a Durham farmer reported that one of his sheep had been attacked by what appeared to be a large cat, while in October 2010 there was a report of a sheep in Darlington with its front legs and half its neck eaten.
