Eurasian lynx in Bavaria (Photo By Aconcagua (talk) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6358217)

Dear Readers, on 11th January this year I was stunned to read that four lynx had been found wandering around in  -14 degree temperatures in the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland. Holy moly! These animals have been extinct in the UK for about a thousand years, but someone seems to have decided that the right thing to do is to release them and to let them fend for themselves.

The first thought was that the animals were an attempt at an illegal rewilding. Normally, such attempts take years of collaboration with local communities and education, not to mention finding suitable animals and ensuring that they are prepared for living wild. Releasing four lynx all at once would put immediate pressure on the food supply for the animals in the immediate area, not to mention that the small birds, hares and other creatures that the lynx eat are very hard to find in winter. Plus, these lynx appeared to be habituated to humans, obviously a very bad thing when what you want for successful rewilding is an animal that’s wary of us.

All of the lynx were easily recaptured (though I imagine they gave the locals a bit of a shock when they were first spotted), but one of them sadly died shortly after recapture. The cats are now in quarantine, and will probably live out the rest of their lives in a zoo or big cat sanctuary.

And when all of that had calmed down, we had this.

Feral Pigs in the Cairngorms (Photo by Greg Macrae)

A group of nine feral pigs (usually wild boar/domesticated pig hybrids) were spotted not far from where the lynx had been released. This time they were rounded up and the whole lot were culled, poor things.

So, I am left wondering if these releases were a serious attempt at rewilding (if so they were extremely ham-fisted), or if someone, somewhere, has a mini-zoo that they can no longer look after, and are liberating their animals a few at a time. But what’s next? Brown bears? Wolves? Moose?

Personally I would love to see some of the wildlife that previously roamed these islands back and living wild, but I’d fear for any releases, especially of apex predators. The release of white-tailed sea eagles has generally been a huge success, but they are still sometimes found dead in ‘suspicious circumstances’, along with golden eagles, hen harriers and virtually any other raptor that you care to name. I suspect that wolves and lynx (the animals most often mentioned in these discussions) would just end up wearing a metaphorical target on their chests. And in a way, I don’t think that we either deserve them, or are grown up enough to live with them peacefully. As a species, we seem to be less and less willing or able to live with the plants and animals that surround us, or  to recognise their right to exist if they inconvenience us in the slightest. Maybe the few wolves and lynx that are left in the world should be allowed to stay in the few remaining wild places where they can go about their lives without meeting up with us, because it seems to me that it never ends well for the animals.

Not to be completely negative, though, I am delighted that most of the beaver releases in the UK seem to be going very well, in spite of occasional local opposition. There are even beavers in Enfield, for the first time since the Middle Ages. And otters have made a remarkable comeback (I mentioned recently that there are even some in Walthamstow Wetlands). Where there are small populations of a native animal, habitat management can have huge benefits, and there are sterling efforts underway for small mammals such as the water vole and the dormouse. It’s worth remembering that most of the animals, birds and plants that we used to have are still here, but just in much smaller numbers. If we can make a place that suits them (as has happened at Knepp, where Turtle Dove numbers are increasing every year) we can often help to revive populations. We just have to be sensible about it.

Turtle Dove at Knepp