World Serval Day: 18 March 2026

18 March marks World Serval Day - which has been marked by BIAZA and Wildheart Animal Sanctuary for several years. But why highlight servals?

In 2026, it is still legal to crossbreed wild servals with domestic cats in the UK. Their offspring are sold as designer pets, known as Savannah cats.

Savannah cats can fetch thousands, which is fuelling poor welfare and the suffering of Servals and savannah cats across the world. World Serval Day wants to see an end to this. By raising public awareness of this barbaric practice and championing legislative change, we aim to end the hybridisation of exotic felids with domestic cats in the UK.

The problem:

1) The Mating Process
The breeding of a serval with a domestic cat is nonsensical. The two species do not naturally want to mate, so they are often forced into a confined area where there is little choice for the female. Repeated matings are often required to ensure success, so this process is repeated many times.

Servals are three times the size of a domestic cat, and mating can lead to injury or even death of the domestic cat in the process.

The source animals are often kept in small inadequate accommodation that meets no satisfactory welfare standards, where they are used to generate profits for their owners.

2) Gestational Issues
Even if the mating is successful, differing gestational periods between the two species leads to miscarriages, stillbirths, dystocia and malformed offspring.

3) Behavioural Issues
Breeding leads to a whole new generation of animals that are not fully domesticated and can therefore suffer from inadequate welfare standards when kept as pets.

Being closely related to their wild forebears, Savannah cats retain many wild characteristics which makes them a threat to native species, a fact which has led to the banning of these cats in other states and countries.

They are aggressive and more prone to attacking family members, other pets and neighbouring animals, which leads to complaints and the intervention of welfare organisations.

They urinate and spray significantly more than normal domestic breeds, which leads to distressing situations for the cat and owner.

4) Abandonment
All these issues culminate in the abandonment of the animal to a rescue centre, and currently centres across Europe are overwhelmed with requests to take such animals. Many will not accept Savannah cats as they see them as a wild species, leaving the owners with no support should they get into trouble.

World Serval Day and the SERVIVAL campaign

World Serval Day is in support of the SERVIVAL campaign. This campaign is championing legislative change within the UK.

Thanks to pressure from SERVIVAL stakeholders, in 2025 DEFRA’s Animal Welfare Committee completed a study looking at the hybridisation of exotic cats. They concluded that the welfare of these animals could not be adequately met in a domestic setting and recommended two key actions to government;

- 1) Legislation should be enacted banning any further deliberate breeding of domestic cats with any non-domestic felid species, or breeding with first two generation hybrid cats (F1 and F2)

2) Legislation should be enacted banning the importation of any domestic wild cat hybrids, with the exception of low hybrid generations of Bengal cats (generation F5 or later)

Government Inaction

Unfortunately, despite these recommendations from its own welfare committee, the government wholly failed to put any provisions in place to stop this cruel practice in its recently published Animal Welfare Strategy. In fact, they ignored cat welfare wholesale, which has angered many organisations who have campaigned for years to make sensible and logical changes to increase protection.

Therefore, the need for public pressure and to increase awareness around this subject is even greater this year, so please do join World Serval Day and help bring about the change that is needed.

On World Serval Day we are asking people to;

• Don’t buy a hybrid cat as a pet
• Don’t like or share any social media posts containing hybrid cats
• Don’t buy cats or kittens online, particularly via social media sites

TAKE PART:
The Wildheart Trust have put together information for partners to help spread the word about World Serval Day and the SERVIVAL campaign. To find out more and for regular updates visit: - https://wildheartanimalsanctuary.org/world-serval-day/