THE MISSING LYNX The Past and Future of Britain’s Lost Mammals
By Ross Barnett
The sixth mass extinction is a split-second twitch of the geological clock. Yet its impact has been giant. The past 50,000 years saw the spread of Homo sapiens across the Earth, bringing with it the extinction of mammoths and moa, dodos and diprotodons, pampatheres and passenger pigeons, toxodonts (a sort of giant sloth) and thylacines (a large carnivorous marsupial). We are the irrefutable cause of the sixth extinction and we would do well to remember it. For, as Ross Barnett knows, the future is uncertain: ‘There is no cut-off point, no box where the spectre of human-caused extinction can be confined.’
As a palaeontologist, Barnett has an intimate knowledge of past extinctions. His tales take on a precautionary relevance in relation to the biodiversity losses of the modern day. Moving on to consider conservation, Barnett argues that ‘natural’ is a meaningless term for contemporary conservation given our constant meddling with fauna and flora. The type of ‘rewilding’ that he advocates is not a return to fabled days of pristine conditions, but simply the restoration of the ecosystem services that our species has degraded.
To Barnett’s trained eye, rewilding Britain is doable. Drawing on evidence from European projects, he debunks the myths surrounding our long-lost fauna: grey wolves are not the scourge that folklore suggests; the reintroduction of lynxes, with careful input from farmers, will not decimate livestock; the industrious beaver’s return will not permanently damage our river systems. In fact, rewilding initiatives can leap from environmental daydreams to financially sound investments, saving millions of pounds of management funds by restoring lost ecosystem services. With this message at its heart, The Missing Lynx is a joyous rabbit-hole to venture down. You may emerge with a sense of despair as regards our bloodthirsty sweep across the globe. But, if done carefully, Barnett believes that rewilding initiatives can uplift the downcast and restore Britain to more biodiverse days.