The UK has been devoid of apex predators for hundreds of years. Now, there’s a proposal to bring the lynx back to northeast England to help the forests heal.
If you go hiking in the United Kingdom, the largest, scariest animal you might encounter is a cow. It’s been hundreds of years since there’s been a predator here big enough to take down a deer, and as a result, the deer have been eating the forests to death.
That’s a big problem in both England and Scotland, but there’s hope that one small animal could help bring the deer population back into balance. Last week, the Lynx UK Trust announced that it would be submitting a proposal to reintroduce the cats to northeast England, where they’ve been absent for over a thousand years since they were hunted to extinction for their fur.
“The fact that the UK is one of the only countries in the world without an apex predator should be a source of huge shame for the government,” Paul O’Donoghue, head of Lynx UK, told The Guardian. “We are in a biodiversity crisis. It is time for the greenwashing and needless conversations to stop and for real actions to occur.”
North of the English border, a parallel organization called Lynx to Scotland says there’s broad support for proposals to bring the predators back to the Highlands. The issue was brought back into the spotlight earlier this year when a couple of lynxes were illegally released in the Cairngorms, which the organization condemned. A survey conducted on their behalf found that over 60 percent of Scots over the age of 16 support the prospect of reintroduction.
“This poll shows that growing numbers of Scots want to see lynx reintroduced and understand that the benefits of their return outweigh any problems they might cause,” Steve Micklewright, chief executive of Trees for Life, one of the charities involved, said in a statement at the time. “A carefully managed lynx reintroduction would make Scotland’s natural world richer and stronger, providing wider benefits for biodiversity, climate resilience and economic prosperity.”
On the other side of the pond, some even bigger teeth could be on the docket soon: California is reportedly considering bringing back the grizzly that adorns its state flag. Most people say they support the idea of grizzly recovery, according to The Guardian.
Whether they’ll want them in their own backyards? That remains to be seen.