Wild LandsCan lynx, even wolves, be reintroduced to the UK? Author and conservationist Mary Colwell believes so, but you might have to sacrifice your cat.
There is a landscape I know well where lynx and wolves roam free, predators that spread a potent mix of fear and wonder across the land. In the shadows of the wildwood, the tense form of a wildcat crouches in ambush for small mammals. There are unruly white-tailed eagle nests in trees and golden eagles soar overhead, their eyes fixed on the ground far below. Beavers dam rivers, bison trample woods, wild horses canter over grasslands. In this wondrous place the air vibrates with many different calls and songs, a wild surround-sound that adds a rich dimension to a tapestry of form, colour, and movement. If this land were music it would be a Beethoven symphony, resonating with drama and spectacle and aching beauty.
For sure, in the half light, the howl of wolves and the caterwauling of wildcats can bring a chill to the soul, but that is counterbalanced by a sense of completeness and a deep understanding that this is the way it must be.
Past Wrongs Righted
A restored ancient balance has reconfigured the players on the stage, and the creatures we removed over the centuries, from either fear or loathing, or both, are once again regulating the systems of the earth. The picture is now pretty well complete. I say ‘pretty well’ because some creatures, bears for example, are still too difficult to re-imagine, their presence too challenging for most people to accept in the UK, but it is orders of magnitude better than the threadbare land that we have created over generations of human-centric living. In this humming, buzzing, roaring, wailing, screaming landscape, past wrongs have been righted and nature restored. And because the presence of large predators in a functioning system has re-wilded me as well, I feel more fully alive and more human here than in any other place on earth.
I wish I could take you to this wondrous world, that we could share it, but it is private. In fact, only I can go there, because it is the landscape of my mind. It exists only as a manifestation of hope within the mysterious neural firings of my brain. It is made by coalescing shards of light gathered from reading about past abundance and being inspired by the present-day endeavours of rewilders. Light shines from memories writ into place names, it glows in the ancient bones of caves, smoulders in the factual accounts written into the dusty pages of logbooks by long-dead gamekeepers or ardent naturalists, people who recorded day-to-day wildness many moons ago. All this evidence from the past meshes with the 21st century courage of those who dream big about bringing back the wild in the form of wildcats, lynx and wolves, and a wondrous world has materialised.
My land is beautiful, hopeful, sometimes nerve-wracking, and aspirational, but it doesn’t exist, not yet.
Dreams Or Nightmare?
Can this dream ever become reality? And if it did, would it be welcomed? I’m aware that for some it is a nightmare. Wildness in the form of top predators brings with it a fear of being out of control and living with hostility, where danger lurks around the corner. Large predators are creatures that are too like us to be comfortable neighbours, they are too in-your-face, too disruptive, too damaging to be tolerated. Livestock and pets could be attacked, even killed, as untameable creatures impose their will on our lives and livelihoods. Why take the risk for some fanciful, crazy dream? It has taken centuries to make a safer world – best to keep it that way.
I understand this fear, it comes from deeply embedded cultural ideas. The stories we have told to justify what we have done are powerful, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf still rings true. Big predators are the enemy that would out-wit and then kill us given any chance. They ate our game animals and hunting dogs, worse still our sheep and cattle, which were the mainstay of the economy for centuries. Rather than learn to live with them, we eradicated them, and in so doing changed the balance of the land. Can we undo the damage and restore our landscapes to completeness?
Changing perceptions requires the telling of new stories that bathe once vilified creatures in a new light; a profound shifting of the narrative. And it is not only our cultural stories that would have to be re-written. Without doubt, welcoming back top predators would require a different approach to farming livestock and how we keep pets. We would need widespread and balanced education to enlighten us about the reintroduced species’ true nature and role in nature. Most difficult of all, we would have to live with the knowledge that our landscapes are now inhabited with creature whose will challenge our own.
None of this will come about without pain and requires far more than a set of habitat requirements and new legislation, it demands that we all dare to have wilder neighbourhoods. If we did, we would be rewarded with healthier, resilient, sustaining ecosystems, the very environment we rely on for food, the economy and our mental health and well-being, but it is a hard argument to win.
Powerful Motivators
It is an oft-quoted fact that the UK is deemed one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth. Over the last 50 years, we have removed over half of the mass of wildlife from our meadows, mountains, and seas. There are far fewer birds, insects, fish, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles to delight, challenge and charm us, but also to pollinate crops, clean air and water, and to fix soils with nutrients. We are struggling to shore up an increasingly threadbare world that is now controlled through widespread use of chemicals and technology. We know we must live with nature if humanity is to flourish, but hearing the message and then acting are two different things. On paper, it is a no-brainer, in reality, it is proving to be exceedingly difficult.
That is where visions come in, they are powerful motivators of change. Having a goal to work towards galvanises action, action gives us hope and hope, as Samuel Johnson said, gives us courage. It is a step-by-step process, we cannot bring back a complete and healthy world immediately, but we can do it one stage at a time. We have already started, with the reintroduction of small creatures that pose no threat, like water voles and butterflies. Tens of thousands of water voles, eradicated due to the introduced mink, have been released across the UK with no resistance. Then it has been stepped up to bigger creatures like great bustards in Wiltshire, wild horses in Norfolk, and bison in Kent. These are curious additions that generate excitement, but are still no threat to us or our way of life. In themselves they won’t change Britain, but they are changing our mindset. There is more controversy surrounding the release of beavers, which are now spreading through the waterways of the UK and reclaiming their historic homes. Farmers and anglers are worried by the effect of dams and altered water courses and persecution has already begun, even so they continue to expand. And now, with a subdued fanfare, 150 wildcats are living free once more in remote areas of Scotland, but plans are afoot to release them in Devon. Resistance to this pioneer predator will undoubtedly grow as they make their mark, but it feels like momentum is building all the time. And once wildcats are established, is it a small step to lynx?
There are real concerns that must be addressed about the practicality of bringing back larger predators into a small, crowded island with very little space. There are farming, sporting, and leisure interests to consider, all of which will be affected; the concerns of communities who have now had hundreds of years without large predators must be listened to. Society has changed since these animals roamed free long ago. We are more urban and less in touch with nature than ever before in human history.
For farmers, there is no doubt that wolves will eat sheep, so too will lynx, it is damaging to say otherwise. But we can point to Europe to show how farms are coping with their return and the losses they incur. A mixture of compensation schemes, large dogs to protect stock, corralling and predator education are vital, as well as a lethal option if individual animals prove to be a major issue. If we don’t prepare the ground, history will repeat itself with widespread retaliation and persecution.
Dreamers Who Do
I believe that we are, inexorably, turning towards a more nature-literate future supported by a nature-literate society which actively wants to see life return in abundance. It is an unstoppable movement, it has to be, but it must be handled with kindness and sensitivity. It would be unfair to the creatures to return them to a hostile land, and unfair to communities to expect too much too quickly. But that is not an excuse for not starting the process of re-naturing Britain now. Once we have our ducks in a row, we will hitch our minds and souls to the stars and set to work. As author Sarah Ban Breathnach wrote, ‘The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do’.
First published in Issue 1 of Bother Magazine, August 2024.
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