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Call of the wild: Re-establishing our lost wild animals

Britain was once home to ferocious creatures such as wolves, bears and wild boar. Peter Marren meets the activists who plan to bring them back

Thursday 09 November 2006 01:00 GMT
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If Peter Clarke had his way, the countryside would be a fiercer, more romantic place. There would be wolves in the hills and lynx in the forests. Rivers would be home to the long-lost British sturgeon, while beavers would build their dams in the headwaters. Maybe the odd walrus would be lying up on an offshore island.

Clarke, a former environment policy adviser to the Thatcher government, is spokesman for a shadowy group called the Wild Beasts Trust. The trust attracted attention recently when Clarke let slip that it was holding six lynxes and two wolves which it planned to release in Scotland. Nothing more has been heard of the release, but the trust reflects a broadly-felt frustration with the lack of progress in re-establishing our lost wild animals.

Britain and Ireland have turned their backs on the rehabilitation of our extinct big beasts. The beaver, lynx, wild boar and wolf are not prehistoric. All are now known to have lived in Britain until early modern times. Many would love to see their return. But the Government, bowing to the landowning lobby, is adamantly opposed. Last year, the Scottish Executive turned down a detailed proposal to release beavers in western Scotland. Yet other EU countries have successfully re-established beavers, lynxes, wolves and even bears.

Clarke points out the contradiction between release of big wild birds and the non-release of big wild mammals. With six million birdwatchers in support, the Government has countenanced the release of red kites all over Britain, and is considering releasing giant sea eagles. But the beaver, it seems, is a beast too far.

For some, the attraction of a land with beavers and other once indigenous large animals goes well beyond ecology. "The soul of a location is changed by the presence of these long-extinct species," says Clarke. "A wolf howling on a moonlit night transforms the poetry of a glen."

The return of the big mammals may in fact be closer than we think. While the new chairman of Scottish Natural Heritage has ruled out any repeat effort to re-establish the beaver, there are well-founded rumours of at least one semi-wild colony in Scotland, (it seems they escaped from a private wildlife farm and built a dam on nearby land).

Stories of big cats, including lynx, are harder to pin down. The British Big Cat Society has records of 2,123 sightings of large black or "sandy-coloured" cats between 2004 and 2005. Moreover, reported sightings have increased recently to around 200 a month. Of course, some are probably hoaxes. The "black panther" whose picture was in two tabloids recently, turned out to be a cuddly toy.

But other sightings are undoubtedly real. Before the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976, pumas and other large cats were kept as status symbols, often by criminal gangs. Thirty years on, their erstwhile owners are admitting that rather than put them down, they had released them to fend for themselves. Records of big cats were rare in Britain before 1976. Since then, they have proliferated. Puma and lynx are well capable of surviving in the wild.

It seems that the lynx, at least, is also being released as part of an unofficial, and illegal, experiment in "rewilding". The Daily Mail recently ran a story of three lynxes spotted eyeing lady golfers near Inverness.

Until the late 1980s, one of the big differences between British and Continental woods was that ours had no boars. The continual rooting of the hogs, which encourages regeneration but disrupts spreads of flowering bluebells, has been absent from Britain since the 17th century. But the farming of wild boar for its meat made the eventual escape of the beast almost inevitable. When part of their security fence collapsed during the 1987 hurricane, a group of wild boars escaped into the local woods in Kent and East Sussex. They are still there. Another group has escaped into Dorset, another in the Forest of Dean.

Wild boar, it is said, are also loose in Scotland. According to Peter Clarke, there is CCTV footage of a great escape at a boar farm near Tentsmuir, in Fife. In a Colditz-like plan, the hogs apparently formed a pyramid by the fence enabling the "alpha male" to leapfrog to safety.

That wild boar are slippery customers was shown in 2002 by a prize porker named McQueen. The 110kg boar was at the doors of a Dunblane slaughterhouse when it managed to jump a wall, cross a river and disappear into a wood. Defra has now embarked on a public consultationon wild boar roaming in local woods. Itaims "to ensure a balance between wild boar and management interests". But Defra plans to release 30 sows that have been made infertile.

So the past 20 years has seen the unplanned establishment of one extinct animal, the wild boar, and the possibility of two others - the lynx and beaver - becoming established. While no reputable conservationist condones illegal releases, the desire to replace our "lost megafauna" seems to be growing.

Last September, the British Association of Nature Conservationists noted big mammals are not only glamourous and exciting. They also tick all the right ecological boxes. Beavers create more diverse woodlands. Boars can aid woodland regeneration. Lynx could help control wild deer. They could save money.

Another way of looking at it, says Peter Clarke, is that if the lynx had died out yesterday there would be a positive clamour to bring it back.

The return of the long-extinct British bear may be a far off. But as Peter Clarke puts it, animal escapes have a habit of happening "spontaneously",whether assisted by high winds, or toppling trees, or a balaclaved figure armed with wire-cutters.

For 50 years, conservationists have sworn by planning as the solution to land-use problems. Rewilding offers an alternative. In a totally unplanned way, the big beasts are coming back. Perhaps one day we could see a beaver chomping at the bottom of the garden.

The species we've lost

WOLF

The ultimate symbol of the wild. Wolves are soon to be released into a controlled environment at Alladale in northern Scotland.

NORTHERN LYNX

According to the animal underground, it is already here, lurking on private Scottish estates. Officially, there are no wild lynxes and no plans to reintroduce any.

EUROPEAN BEAVER

Scotland's refusal to countenance the release of the beaver infuriated conservationists. But you can keep them behind a fence without a licence, and beavers have a habit of getting out, so chances are there will be a wild colony by 2015.

STURGEON

The common sturgeon used to spawn in British rivers but is now all but extinct in Western Europe. There are no plans to reintroduce it, but fans are said to be illicitly sprinkling caviar (sturgeon's eggs) in northern lakes.

WALRUS

The walrus, the world's largest seal, is an Arctic animal and the few spotted in Britain were likely strays.

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