Bring Back the Big Cats

Bring back the big cats

It’s time to start returning vanished native animals to Britain, says John Vesty

There is a poem, written around 598 AD, which describes hunting a mystery animal called a llewyn. But what was it? For centuries people assumed it was a mythical creature, or perhaps a wolf. Then in 2006, in a cave in the Yorkshire Dales, a palaeontologist found the bone of an animal that turned out to be a Eurasian lynx. Carbon dating showed it had died around 1,500 years ago, coinciding with the composition of the poem.

Until this discovery, the lynx – a large spotted cat with tasselled ears – was presumed to have died out in Britain at least 6,000 years ago, before the inhabitants of these islands took up farming. But the 2006 find, together with three others in Yorkshire and Scotland, is compelling evidence that the lynx and the mysterious llewyn were in fact one and the same animal. If this is so, it survived in Britain for thousands of years longer than previously assumed.

Such findings present a big challenge to British conservation, which has often selected arbitrary stopping places in ecological history and tried to preserve them. It has tried to preserve the living world as if it were a museum piece, maintaining habitats that were created by human destruction – such as heathland and moorland – rather than allowing nature to follow its own course.

Rewilding means the mass restoration of damaged ecosystems. It involves letting trees return to places that have been cleared, allowing parts of the seabed to recover from commercial fishing, and reintroducing creatures that have gone missing. Large predators are especially important: some of them drive dynamic processes that resonate right through the food chain, creating 'trophic cascades' that enhance biodiversity and stabilise ecosystems.

At sea the potential is even greater: by protecting large areas from commercial fishing, we could once again see the marine ecosystem restored to its former glory. Such marine reserves have been shown to increase catches in surrounding waters, providing substantial practical benefits for the fishing industry itself.

Rewilding is a rare example of an environmental movement in which campaigners articulate what they are for rather than only what they are against. Instead of a defensive campaign to protect fragments of nature from destruction, rewilding offers a positive, inspiring vision of ecological regeneration that is far more appealing to the public.

The lynx presents no threat to human beings: there is no known instance of one preying on people. It is a specialist predator of roe deer, a species that has multiplied dramatically in Britain in recent decades, causing severe damage to young saplings and suppressing the natural regeneration of native forests. By checking deer populations, the lynx could help restore the missing links of our ancient woodland ecosystems.

The lynx requires deep cover, and as such presents little risk to sheep, which are grazed primarily on open hillsides. Farmers’ fears about heavy livestock losses are largely unfounded. On the European continent, where lynx have been reintroduced, predation on farm animals has been negligible.

The attempt to reintroduce this predator marries with initiatives in Scotland to return native trees, such as Scots pine, oak, and birch, to bare glens. The lynx has now been reintroduced to the Jura Mountains between France and Switzerland, and to parts of Germany and Slovenia, showing that peaceful coexistence between humans, livestock, and large carnivores is entirely possible.

Here, attitudes are just beginning to change. Conservationists are starting to accept that the old paradigm of managed decline must give way to ambitious rewilding. As rural communities across Europe discover that eco-tourism centred on charismatic wildlife can be more lucrative than traditional farming, the case for bringing back Britain’s lost carnivores grows ever stronger.