Living with lynx — the potential reintroduction of carnivores such as lynx to these islands
The Lynx UK Trust will apply this year to release several Eurasian lynx into the wild.
The potential reintroduction of large carnivores, like wolves, lynx and bears, to these islands has long been mooted by some rewilding advocates. But until fairly recently, it seemed like a far-fetched fantasy for armchair conservationists who had watched too many David Attenborough documentaries.
No longer. In 2017, the Lynx UK Trust made an application for trial reintroductions of small numbers of lynx to Thetford Forest on the Norfolk–Suffolk border and Kielder Forest in Northumbria. It was declined,17 but a consortium of rewilding organisations are considering the idea further north, through the Missing Lynx and the Lynx to Scotland projects.
Also in Scotland, some controversial large landholders have made no secret of their desire to return wolves to at least parts of the countryside.
The notion that large carnivores could once again roam these beloved islands I call home fills me with a range of emotions. The idea of coming face to face with a wolf or lynx on my weekly walks through the forests and hills of County Antrim fills me with wonder and anticipation. At the same time, the conflict, complexity and expense required to get to that point fills me with dread. Fans and critics of reintroductions will have legitimate opinions on how they could work, where they could work and, most significantly, whether they should be allowed to happen at all.
I do love wolves and lynx and bears. They and their ilk enchant me, especially lynx and the 40 other species of the cat family.
They always have. But I also know that they can be difficult to live with, posing real or perceived threats to humans and their activities.
Nature, after all, is red in tooth and claw. I fully understand why our ancestors got rid of these animals. I also fully understand why many people want to see at least some of these species return. A part of me feels the same.
Yet I also love cattle and sheep and goats. I love farming as a way of life and a way of being. It’s in my blood. Its roots run deep. I know how hard it is to run a small farm on marginal ground, and cope with the cascading demands of market, state and society.
I’m deeply sceptical that the British or Irish governments have the capacity or competence to manage something like this. I worry that this issue will be deeply divisive, a feeling compounded by my bitter dislike of sectarianism in all its forms, further informed by the Northern Irish parts of me.
I fully understand why many people do not want to see any of these species return to our shores. A part of me feels the same.
The Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) — appearing in no fairy tales that I was read as a child — is a mid-sized feline, about the size of a springer spaniel. But there’s nothing diminutive about its abilities. Like all cats, it is a power athlete. A stealth fighter. Fluid motion. Grace.
As I worked with two pairs of lynx at a Hertfordshire cat collection in the early summer of 2007, I was struck by their intelligence.
A brooding sentience behind those baleful, yellow eyes. Compared to all those large herbivores in Canada, I never once felt physically threatened, even when cleaning out their enclosures with them in it.
But I did feel looked down upon. Intellectually, at least.
Did our ancestors feel the same? It’s impossible to say because the evidence for lynx overlapping with people across Britain and Ireland is fairly limited compared to bears, and especially to wolves.
In Ireland, the sole piece of evidence is from a femur found in Kilgreany cave, County Waterford, and dated to just under 9,000 years ago.
Archaeologists urge caution in assessing evidence from this site, due to the extent of disturbance. In other words, we can’t really base the widespread presence of lynx in Ireland on this single piece of bone. But given the cryptic and elusive nature of the species, we cannot rule it out.
After all, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If that were the case, you could assume a population crash in the Irish Iron Age, compared to the Bronze Age, such is the relative paucity of some types of evidence. In fact and in part, it may be more a result of the damp Irish climate and what that means for the survival of iron remains.
Overall, however, the solitary Kilgreany femur does leave an emphatic question mark hanging over lynx in Ireland.
In Britain, there is more physical proof for lynx presence and persistence. Lynx bones from two sites in northern England have been dated to 1,842 and 1,550 years ago, respectively. The authors of a study on this issue suggest that a seventh-century Cumbrian text alludes to the species. Yet others point out that no lynx-related Celtic or Old English names live on.
More recent work has suggested the presence of lynx in early modern Scottish text which, if accurate, would bring forward the presence of the species in Britain by about a 1,000 years. As with bears, lynx were probably never common. But unlike bears, their size and natural shyness makes it likely that they could have persisted longer in, say, the more remote parts of the island.
Either way, the same combination of factors — hunting, plus competition with humans for prey and habitat — probably did for lynx as they did for bears. They vanished from our lands.
- Jonny Hanson is an environmental social scientist at Queen's University Belfast and an award-winning social entrepreneur who set up and managed Northern Ireland’s first community-owned farm. Raised between Malawi, Africa, and Monaghan, Ireland, he has a PhD in snow leopard conservation from the University of Cambridge and is an affiliate of the Snow Leopard Conservancy.
This is an extract from his book, which is out on Tuesday, February 11.
