The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Lynx Trust all about the lira
The Lynx UK Trust apparently doesn’t do irony, as proven by its recently expressed deep concerns about sheep welfare while advocating the reintroduction of lynx which are known to prey on sheep.
There’s still no valid reason for reintroducing lynx to an environment where it has not been seen for several centuries, and which has changed beyond all recognition. The subsistence farmers have long given way to the improvers, and intensive farming of crops and animals is the order of the day. Even the most extensive hill farms are heavily stocked compared to the past. The empty wilderness that formed most of rural Scotland four hundred years ago is now, by comparison, a heavily-populated working environment.
From a farming viewpoint, the reintroduction of species which have been extinct for centuries has been an unmitigated disaster. Sea eagles which were reintroduced privately and without public consultation have wreaked havoc with sheep stocks and farm incomes in parts of the West Highlands and the islands. Beavers, also released, either accidentally or on purpose from private ownership, have been carving a destructive path along waterways in Tayside. It all comes at a price, and it’s not being paid by the people who have let these vermin loose in the countryside. The Lynx UK Trust claims lynx kill only one or two sheep per year in Austria and France, but the lynx which escaped in south-west England killed four sheep in a week.
Among the Lynx UK Trust Big Ideas for enhancing the life chances of sheep are free llamas as flock guardians, and funding for things that ignorant peasants have never thought of before such as flock vaccinations, provision of ‘shelters’, and ‘critical early-life care’. And let’s not forget compensation for losses and shiny new fences to prevent ‘road kill’ – all supposedly funded from the profits of visitor centres. But if the trust failed to meet its obligations, it’s a racing certainty that taxpayers would again be footing the bill.
Sea eagles and beavers, originally released by private individuals, rapidly gained protected status and became a drain on the public purse.
Sea eagle predation now requires the services of experts to write expensive reports, legions of bird-botherers and support staff to observe and collect data and operate schemes to compensate crofters for losses. They need offices, IT systems, 4x4s to cover rough terrain, and assorted expenses.
It’s a growing industry and it’s funded mostly by the taxpayers. If permission was given for lynx to be reintroduced, they’d need a whole new crop of expert advisers and support staff to inform the governments on both sides of the border.
Where would the well-paid lynx consultants most likely be found? Where else but the Lynx UK Trust which would then be in line for a share of the generous dripping roast that is the public purse.
The campaign to bring back lynx has less to do with nature’s balance and more to do with bank balance. No one should be fooled into thinking it’s anything else.