LYNX: NOT what we need now…..

The more I think about it, the clearer I am that it would be totally wrong to introduce lynx anywhere in Britain at this critical juncture: the moment when the Wild Isles series has highlighted the huge problems we face.

We all know very well that Britain must continue to feed itself; indeed this is all the more crucial as the requirements of a more sustainable future dictate that we must reduce food-miles. But we also know that the way we have ‘done’ agriculture in recent decades has brought increased production at great cost to our countryside and the creatures who inhabit it. Farming must change.

The changes required to turn our intensive and extensive arable (and vegetable) prairies into a truly ‘regenerative’ agriculture are hugely important, but of probably little relevance to any potentially introduced lynx; they would shun the big open spaces.

But there is a growing body of experience and opinion that says that medium- and small-scale agriculture, particularly livestock production, needs to change…and change back to an older model. It does not matter whether you call it agroforestry, silvo-pasture, or simply orchards-with-stock, but in order to keep feeding our people, while meeting the urgent demands of the Climate and Biodiversity Crises, there can be no doubt: we must integrate agriculture (of almost any type) with growing trees.

There are now several examples, but Knepp remains perhaps the best-known, and indeed a most dramatic example at one end of this desirable spectrum: here, a conventional, modern, high-input, dairy unit was ‘abandoned’ to ‘Rewilding’ and has emerged in time as both an amazing biodiversity ‘hot-spot’ while now producing organic, free-range meat. At the other end of the spectrum, there must be a number of orchards which are grazed by sheep or cows or have pigs rooting around the trees for a few months. There are several possible models, local variations, strange combinations, but they are, basically, all highly desirable in the context of the Crises we face.

And there can be no doubt at all that they would be most attractive to lynx, providing the perfect combination of cover and prey. This would simply not work.

And in the many areas where agriculture has a lower priority, and nature a higher one, the countless reserves which our Wildlife Trusts and other important conservation bodies maintain, there is no doubt of the significant contribution to biodiversity made by various grazing species, (bison, cattle, ponies, sheep, etc.,). Here, again, there is no doubt that introduced lynx would wreak havoc.

It is important, I think, that we should consider the reasons why so many people are enthusiastic about introducing lynx. For many, I know, it would add an element of ‘naturalness’ to our landscapes to have a predator roaming our countryside. But here, I have to make it clear that I think these people (however well-intentioned) are mistaking the very nature of Britain.

One simple fact is that Britain is densely populated; France, for instance, has roughly the same number of inhabitants, but, again roughly, three times the land area, so much more open space for all the requirements of a modern country. And while we do have open spaces, mountains and moorlands, for instance, they are often close to areas of  intensive agriculture, or to conurbations. Both these ‘proximities’ can cause real conflict; how do you maintain wildlife in Snowdonia, for instance, given the hordes that now head for the hills on a sunny Bank holiday?

Historically, the fact that Britain is an island meant that once troublesome creatures like bears, wolves and lynx were exterminated, there was no possibility of recruitment from elsewhere, and farmers could get on with their work; in fact, they still had two awkward factors to contend with. One was the British weather, which must always have been a problem, the other was the presence of deer. And, again, centuries ago, the deer population was limited by hunting, and being confined to ‘forests’ and deer parks. There were, no doubt, regular escapes from these ‘reserves’, but, by and large, the farming population, (pre-Industrial Revolution) could get on with its task of working with nature in order to produce food.

We still have surviving traces of the landscapes they created in this interaction with the natural world. Some featured in the Wild Isles programmes. They include water-meadows, haymeadows, upland grassland, and managed woodlands of native trees, all rich with biodiversity. Our extraordinary heritage of ancient oaks and bluebell woods, for instance, derives from the constraints of our particular history.

It is hard, I know, when looking at tracts of Britain, to realise how much they have recently changed, how rich they were, and how that richness derived from the interaction between Man and Nature. Thinking of the area of the North of Scotland that I know best, the magnificent Parish of Assynt, I realise that most visitors will see it as ‘wild’ and ‘natural’; true, there are a few annoying sheep on the road, but the rough moors are home to considerable numbers of red deer, and what could be more romantic than that elusive photograph of a magnificent stag against the improbable profile of Suilven, that most dramatic mountain? No wonder some want to add in a truly wild predator, to think of lynx prowling the woods……..

But I can remember the lost biodiversity, the clouds of butterflies above the flower-rich haymeadows, which have now virtually disappeared. They were created by centuries, probably thousands of years of small-scale agriculture, and bordered by the complex shapes of the moss-and-lichen-draped veteran trees, coppices and pollards, in the adjoining wood-pastures, and the startling green islands of  numerous sheilings which were maintained by, and maintained, the old custom of transhumance.

The small-scale agriculture which maintained the haymeadows has gone, and their flower-rich beauty has been replaced by a much poorer, bracken- or rush-dominated landscape, which the proliferating deer do nothing to control. (The same deer are now in such numbers as to threaten the long-term survival of the woods, which until recently owed their continued existence to the fact that they were used and valued).

Other parts of Britain are still, (but just) more fortunate; we can still see the biodiversity which comes from careful interaction between our species and the natural world. The revolution in agriculture which brought industrial processes to the countryside destroyed much of this ancient richness, but we know that we can recreate at least some of it. The great spectacles filmed for the Wild Isles proved that there is nothing ‘second-rate’ about the interaction between human-created landscapes and nature. It did not matter that it was the farmed fields of Islay which, along with remaining saltmarsh, attract the great numbers of geese, where the white-tailed eagles seek their prey.

I feel, very strongly, that the Wild Isles showed the value of what we have; we should not deny the contribution that our own species has made in creating some of that beauty, in, crucially, enhancing its biodiversity. What is natural, like the dense jungle of bracken which cloaks the hillside above my old home, is not always richest, not always the most beautiful, not always what we need.

It is easy to be lured by the romance of the natural, the predator lurking in the woods, but such introductions do not always make sense in the real context, and future needs of our ‘Wild Isles’. If we are looking for biodiversity (and we know we must) what is purely ‘natural’ cannot be our over-riding concern.

The image of the lynx above is by courtesy of Scotland-The Big Picture; but the opinions above are very much my own!