Peter Cairns
Scotland: The Big Picture
One of the key players in the Lynx consultation is rewilding charity Scotland: The Big Picture. They advocate for wildlife such as cranes, beavers and lynx, building ways for humans and animals to coexist in a way that is good for both. scotlandbigpicture.com/ lynx-to-scotland
“Bringing back any animal, especially a large predator, is 20% ecology and 80% social politics – it’s all to do with people.
“We want to be able to evaluate accurately for the first time whether, despite all the rhetoric, Scotland has an appetite to see lynx returned and the range of perspectives around it. How many people understand them? How many are quoting from a position of being informed? Is it an issue of prejudice or of genuine physical concern?
“At one of the public meetings somebody said, ‘One big factor, from a farmer’s point of view, is the stress of knowing there’s a big predator around, potentially targeting their sheep.’ Another guy then said, ‘I’ve got two children under the age of five. What about the stress I have of bringing them up to a lifetime bereft of nature?’ There are some really interesting perspectives emerging around this question, and it’s nothing to do with lynx. It’s to do with people and their perception and understanding of the landscape. These are questions that extend beyond lynx.
“It’s not necessarily about the animal itself, it’s what people perceive the animal to represent. For some that’s a gateway to a richer future in terms of nature, and to others it’s towards rural communities spiraling down the plughole.
“Two words always come to the fore, whichever angle you’re taking, and the first is change. People don’t like change, and they especially don’t like to feel that change is being imposed on them. And the second is control. We’ve grown up in a society that is used to having absolute control over every square inch of the country. Those two words are right at the heart of this discussion.
“Most people’s relationship with nature is not logical, it’s not rational, it’s certainly not scientific. It’s emotional, and that ranges from somebody having a fondness for hedgehogs, to a farmer on the north coast of Caithness where generations of his family have toiled to bring it under control. These are deep-seated things that are felt at a really visceral level.”