Wolves would ‘naturally cut 1.5m deer population’
THEY are the snarling beasts of fiction and folklore, but conservationists hope to bring wolves back to the British countryside within the next 20 years to help keep the deer population down.
The Wildwood Trust, which has successfully helped reintroduce beavers, water voles, pine martins and dormice to parts of the UK where they had become extinct, wants to start “rewilding” the country with larger creatures.
In March, the trust brought a pack of six wolves from Sweden to its 200-acre parkland site in Escot, East Devon, where their behaviour is being monitored as part of a research project into animal domestication, and to see how they adapt to living in Britain.
Experts believe that introducing wolves back into the countryside could help control the burgeoning deer population, which stands at around 1.5million animals, the highest it has been for 1,000 years. Deer have no natural predators, and cause destruction to the woodland habitats of native species.
They also are responsible for around 50,000 traffic accidents and the deaths of 20 people each year.
Peter Smith, executive of the Wildwood Trust, said the charity wanted to reintroduce lynx in the next few years, followed by wolves in around two decades, and brown bears within 50 years. But they first must meet rewilding protocols set out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and then gain a licence from Natural England.
“These animals were all once native to Britain, and the benefits they could bring to the ecology of Britain would be immense,” he said. “Wolves and lynx will change the behaviour of the deer, causing populations to drop naturally, which helps plants and trees to flourish.
There are wolves all over
Europe and they don’t cause problems. When was the last time you heard of someone being killed by a wolf ?”
Wolves have not existed in Britain for around 300 years after they were hunted to extinction to allow sheep farming to expand.
Calls for their reintroduction date from 1999 when Dr Martyn Gorman, a senior lecturer in zoology at Aberdeen
University, suggested they should be brought back to deal with the 350,000 deer in the Scottish Highlands which were damaging trees. But the idea was shelved after an outcry from sheep farmers.
The Lynx Trust has also been campaigning for the reintroduction of the wildcats to Britain. The last lynx was hunted to extinction around 700AD. The National Farmers Union (NFU) has raised fears that predators like lynx and wolves would hunt sheep, dogs and attack ramblers. Claire Robinson, NFU countryside adviser, said: “The arguments for rewilding appear idealistic and ignore economic impacts.
“We also have concerns over the impact on farm animals.” However, Mr Smith said: “It may be beneficial for farmers because when lynx and wolves are around there are fewer foxes and badgers.”