RETURN OF THE WOLVES
Howls of dissent may not stop a...
It is dusk and you are camping far from habitation, perhaps in Badenoch or the remoter parts of West Aberdeenshire, amid what remains of Scotland’s oldest woodland, the Caledonian Forest.
the fire crackles gently. then – how it freezes the blood – you hear a distant cry, the most spine-chilling in nature. It is the howl of a wolf; of menace and desolation, of predation, savagery and death...
Wolves are huge. they stand 3ft at the shoulder. they have powerful legs, capable of running at more than 20 miles an hour. their formidable jaws can crunch with twice the force of a German shepherd dog.
But it is those wide-set yellow eyes that truly appal. Nothing in creation stares like a wolf.
Feared in Scotland as long as there have been people, our last wolf was killed in the 18th century. Yet, for more than a decade – despite anxious demur from such agencies as Scottish Natural Heritage – there is serious talk of bringing them back.
there are precedents – white-tailed sea-eagles from Norway were released on Mull in the 1970s and thrived while beavers, too, have controversially returned.
But the European wolf has quadrupled since 1970. their continued absence from the UK seems, to some, an anomaly.
And Britain has a serious problem with deer. their numbers have never been so high and Scotland’s population of red deer alone has doubled in my lifetime.
Highland lairds, trying efficiently to manage their land – paying guests only want to shoot stags – have to spend thousands every year culling unwanted hinds.
Deer cause around 42,000 UK road accidents every year and, on top of the destruction of habitat for such things as nightingales, dormice and bluebells, the damage on our roads alone is soaking us to the tune of £10million annually.
What we need, say thoughtful and courageous analysts, is the return of a top predator. It would restore the natural balance, improve biodiversity and help revive native British woods. the wolf fits the bill.
Paul Lister is heir to the MFI fortune and laird of the 28,000 acre Alladale estate in Sutherland, and is determined to restore it to its natural state.
Most visitors to the Highlands exclaim at such unspoiled beauty. What few grasp is that, after centuries of deforestation, overgrazing and climate change, it is devastated – a landscape man has ruined.
Mr Lister has planted thousands of native tree saplings and is re-wetting peat bogs. He has restored the red squirrel. Boar proved a mistake and a trial with moose found them too keen on the trees.
HE grew bored with such herbivores, saying: ‘It’s carnivores that are needed to manage deer numbers. trees aren’t out of control in Scotland. Deer are. We’ll show people animals up here when the wolves and bears come back.’
Mr Lister first announced his plan for wolves in 2007 and there has been general seething about his vision ever since.
He wants securely to fence his entire estate and release two wolf packs. If that succeeds, he will add lynx and European bears.
‘People would pay to travel, safari style, through the glens,’ writes one observer, with just a hint of tongue in cheek, ‘hoping for the chance to spot a wolf pack pulling down a stag on some snowy summit.’
Helen todd of Ramblers Scotland is keen to praise all the worthy and environmentally kind things Mr Lister has done, but dismisses his scheme as a ‘glorified safari park. He has to put them in a fence. And then he wants to keep everybody out of the fence unless they pay money to go and see them. that’s not really what we have in mind when we think of reintroduction.’
the scheme certainly collides utterly with Scotland’s 2003 rightto-roam legislation.
As the law stands, too, such a fenced enclosure – however vast – is effectively a zoo. And there are rules about zoos: predator and prey must be confined separately, rather than make bloody entertainment for the paying public.
Mr Lister argues in turn that few come to Alladale. None of its hills are Munros, so climbers have no interest. there are perhaps 300 hikers a year. His plan, he insists, would bring up to 20,000 wellheeled visitors a year, to the prosperity of local shops.
A study on Mull, he points out, established that its sea-eagles are worth £5million annually to the local economy and, directly and indirectly, support 110 jobs.
When he bought Alladale, there were 20 red deer to the square kilometre. By costly culling, he has reduced that to six, and hopes for four. Wolves would do the job better and far more cheaply.
there is a good precedent overseas. By the 1990s, the elk padding America’s Yellowstone National Park were causing evident devastation to its woodlands. Management reintroduced wolves.
Over the years they have reduced the elk population to sustainable numbers. Young trees have taken root and flourished in land long grazed bare.
their roots, in turn, have reinforced the banks of rivers, forcing them to flow more slowly, creating pools to attract yet more wildlife.
the wolves do not only prey on the elk, they unsettle them, keep them on the move. Assorted species of birds have returned.
For many enthusiasts in the ‘rewilding’ movement, the wolf should be the poster boy of environmentalism.
But little in life is as delicate as an ecosystem. A change in attitudes – or legislation – can have unforeseen consequences.
Persecuted almost to extinction, in 1988 the shy pine marten was granted full legal protection. Its numbers have since recovered, to the point where they are now a pest to people’s poultry.
But there was also a parallel recovery in the population of red squirrels – the alien grey squirrel is, in pine marten country, steadily dying out. In Ireland – once overrun by the wretched things – they may well be extinct in 20 years.
the reason is bloodily simple. ‘Red squirrels have a simple adaptation to pine martens: they are small and light enough to get to the ends of the branches, where the martens can’t follow,’ George Monbiot enthuses. ‘But grey squirrels, which did not co-evolve with these predators, are, by comparison, lumps: slower and heavier than the native species. Meals on legs, in other words.’
the pine marten and red squirrel are natives which happily co-exist – and the grey squirrel pest, and the near-eradication of the pine marten, is a good example of what happens when man meddles.
Scottish Natural Heritage had to spend millions to exterminate mink and polecat-ferrets in the Outer Hebrides, after they were irresponsibly introduced in the 1960s. Hedgehogs – also alien to the Western Isles – are now being firmly shipped out of the Uists.
SOME chump brought moles to Skye, thinking they would surely be confined within his walled garden, and at least one moron released a fox in Harris. (It was very properly shot.) But, for good or ill, we do not know how the wolf might, in time, impact the ecology of the Highlands.
there was a good reason why they disappeared. People hated them. Wolves preyed on their sheep and cattle. they attacked men, women and children. they even dug up our dead, which is why so many ancient graveyards of the Gaels are on little islands.
Writing a useful description of the Western Isles in 1563, Bishop Donald Monro remarked of Harris – and as an obvious selling point – that ‘there are no wolves there’.
Scotland, even when the last wolf copped it in 1743, had far more forest – and far fewer people – than we boast today.
the European wolf is a much shyer animal than its deceased Scottish cousin. Man’s long persecution of wolves has changed their behaviour and personality. Between 1952 and 2002, only eight people were fatally attacked by wolves in all Europe and the Russias. to put that in perspective, between 2000 and 2015, 74 people in Britain were killed by cows.
So afraid of man is today’s canis lupus lupus that a she-wolf will not attack you even if she comes home to find you killing her cubs.
But knowing a wolf is unlikely to tear you to pieces is one thing. Happily sleeping out under canvas in a forest where you know wolves are roaming is another matter.
there are several reasons for great caution in bringing them back to our glens. For one, the wolf is mobile. A golden eagle will find a mate and a territory and hang on to her (and that patch of hillside) for the rest of his days.
the wolf is a pack animal, and a ranging one. they can travel 20 miles in 24 hours and have been recorded making journeys of more than 400 miles. You might well release wolves in Alladale or Strathspey. But there is no guarantee they will stay there.
For another, it is naïve to think wolves will, of conscious social duty, confine their diet to deer. Like us, they seek as easy a living as possible and deer are swift, fleet things and a bother to catch. Fat and plodding crofters’ sheep are another matter, and there is an additional complication.
Most European sheep are kept in fenced fields, under human supervision. In the Highlands, traditionally, sheep are put out on the wild hillside all summer long, till the autumn fanks and gatherings.
In Bulgaria, wolves are taking sheep in great numbers and farmers are at war against the environmentalists who defend them.
the really endangered species in the Highlands and Islands is not the osprey or the sea-eagle. It is people. For ten generations the wolf, to us, has been but a thing of fairy tales, dark folklore and the dusty pages of history. It is there, for Scotland, it should remain.