The Highlands were not a wilderness.

They were once.

I mean most of thier prey has been eradicated over the centuries

No, tons of deer all over the place. They are a pest in fact in many circumstances.

As for numbers – there are plenty of instances of heavily managed predator populations in the US. They have a whole government department for managing wildlife. It doens’t cost anything – in fact it makes a fat profit. Instead of paying gamekeepers you let people pay you for tickets so they can come and shoot whatever you need culled.

eagles won’t eat ramblers. Wolves probably will

Don’t think so. Between 1952 and 2002 in the USA there were three fatal attacks. And many many more wolves than we would ever be able to support.
Think wolves stay away from people to avoid getting shot.

Wild boar are nothing but a pest we have 1000s of the Barstewards cause a shed load of damage everywhere

Maybe re-introduce a predator or two? 🙂

Tbh I don’t think we’ve got the space for wolves. Unless we can come up with some kind of technological solution like electric shock vests for sheep. It doesn’t have to be wolves and bears that get reintroduced though. Beavers, wildcats and so on would be welcome.

Just imagine, East Anglia will soon be empty when all the fruit and veg farmers can no longer operate without European labour. It’ll make wonderful wetland habitat.

Re-wilding would have to start with taking most of the land into government ownership first. Maybe when we can synthesise all our food in factories it’d be a goer.

ahwiles – Member

This thread perfectly presents how this discussion gets derailed.

Suggestion: Easing off the intensive grazing / draining / shooting / dredging in some upland / lowland / marshy areas, offering plants and critters help where practical / cost effective.

Response: Wolves!?!?

Erm, did you even read the OP?

Heard an item about it on Radio 4 the other day. They’re talking about reintroducing wolves to parts of Scotland and Wales.

What do you think about this in principle, and about wolves specifically?

Anyway Beavers, lets talk about Beavers I went to the introduction site in Devon, the positive effect on the flora is startling, I presume the insects are as happy too and thats before all the reduction in water fliws through the catchment.

Beavers should definitely be reintroduced and not just in enclosures. Wolves too. Big cats would be pretty cool too.

Hm.

They dammed Cardiff Bay some years ago. There were a lot of concerns about the loss of the tidal mud flats. But now the once tidal area of the river is lined with reeds and rushes that must be great habitat.

Re-wilding or not?

Lots of issues in France with wolves . They go for the sheeps .

they are very clever animals and have moved from the Alps and their numbers are increasing rapidly .

Where I live there are frequent attacks on sheeps .

An observation on the earlier talk of Lakes rewilding.

I love the lakes, even coming from north of the border, it’s my favourite place to ride, I have a real affinity with the area, just love it.

But by God it’s barren, I can’t think of an area up here that has so little wildlife, ive been biking there for years, and can’t really ever recall seeing any wildlife of note, save the otters on Windermere.

molgrips – Member
‘The Highlands were not a wilderness.”
They were once.

When? All indications are that humans moved in as the ice retreated.

Has anyone suggested genetically engineered midge-eating yet otherwise vegitarian mini-wolves yet?

Otherwise, I’m not convinced.

No bears.
Do not look at pictures of bear attack survivors.

Beavers, yes.
Everyone likes beavers.

And someone needs to give Delia a bung to promote venison.

They bought one a year or so ago with more or less that specific aim, it’s caused some alarm…

No they didn’t. They bought just the land, leaving someone else to buy the farmhouse. It’s 20 mins from home and I camped out ‘wild’ on the land on Saturday.

the “alarm” was actually disappointment that the farm land has been hived off from the farmhouse, so breaking up a key Borrowdale farm.
I agree with them doing it though, as it would have been bought by someone else – probably not a local farmer.

From NT site:

Our plans for the future

We’ll continue to farm this land and we believe we can look after it in way which benefits nature, our visitors and the local community.

We already manage much of the surrounding land in Borrowdale, which means we can take a ‘big picture’ view of how we look after the wider landscape. That allows us to continue farming and at the same time deliver healthy soil, natural water management, thriving natural habitats and continued public access.

We will also explore how we may be able to use the farm to slow the flow of the Upper River Derwent, thereby contributing to the prevention of flooding downstream in communities such as Keswick and Cockermouth.

The Trust has a long history of and is committed to the tradition of Herdwick farming. We have an existing stock of 21,000 Herdwick sheep and we own 54 farms in the Fells.

The land will be managed by a tenant, and we have already had several expressions of interest. It will be farmed with nature in mind but it will continue to support a flock of Herdwick sheep.

Hardly recreating wilderness. They’ve put some nice new gates in, and fencing.

Another example is the reintroduction or success of the Red Kite… which has gone from endangered to making other native raptors endangered.

Has it? Dont suppose you care to mention those raptors it is endangering do you and the source of this claim?
Still waiting on the factual info on which raptors the kite has endangered.
The only one I could possibly think of is the buzzard, and those only through increased competition for the same food resources.
Kites are only now starting to show up around my neck of the woods in North Wilts, there was one soaring over the Heddington & Stockley traction engine rally near Calne on Sunday, and I’ve seen them occasionally elsewhere, but but not in significant numbers as yet.
Buzzards are almost as common as bloody pigeons, though, and travelling back and forth to Devon and Cornwall along the M5/A30, I see loads of them every day, so having a bit of competition might not be a bad thing, balance the numbers out.

The uplands will need to be re-populated with humans.

Given that increasing global population, eventually we’ll need to move people back into the country and reclaim all the low-lying, high-value and flood-prone agricultural land from the cities.

Brexit merely illustrated the lack of a coherent regional policy (redistributing people and wealth evenly across the uk).

So it’s more about re-wilding the cities (like Crysis 2)

I’d recommend re-settling the uk’s poorest families back to the country (like pre-enclosure/ clearances), give them say, 40 acres and a mule and pay them to grow hemp on the poorest land. Apparently it’s a great nitrogen fixer and co2 trap.
One acre of hemp makes four times more paper than an acre of trees…

but the rise of buzzards and magpies has had a large effect on the song birds where I am

You sure this is causation and not correlation? Whilst there will be some impact it is unclear what the level is and habitat destruction is far more likely to have an impact.
The main acusers of magpies (or rather corvids in general) and buzzards (or raptors in general) are groups like the “songbird survival trust” aka astroturf organisation for the shooting lobby.

I’ve recently read Monbiot’s Feral, too. Well worth it on this subject – you won’t look at our ‘wild’ landscapes the same ever again. Basically, nature creates it’s own checks and balances which humans have messed up big time, and worryingly sometimes out of good intent.

If anyone wants the book, I’ll post it for a Treesforlife donation.

Buzzards are almost as common as bloody pigeons,

Kites will soon make Buzzards seem illusive and rare. The reason they were quite casually wiped out in the uk was because they were so common place nobody cared about them – ‘Shitehawks’. London was hoaching with them “City of kites and crows” as Shakespere would put it.

And this is my point about fashion – we don’t consider the animals that actually thrive in our environment ‘natural’ enough, ignoring the darwinian forces that allow them to thrive – rats, pigeons, midges, bedbugs, ticks ( 😉 ) urban foxes are ‘pests’ and we imagine that ‘nature’ is something else and that we have to create and manage it to make it happen.

Kites are lovely but the natural population levels they’ll tend towards will be less like the odd soaring raptor over a bucolic countryside and more like a swarm of seagulls on a landfill site – they’re ‘nature’ too by the way.

Kites:

boxelder – Member

Hardly recreating wilderness. They’ve put some nice new gates in, and fencing.

which is exactly the point i was trying to make in the first place: no-one (never mind a community) has been forced out for re-wilding.

(i was aware that the NT had bought a farm/farmland, had mentioned planting some trees, and some peoples’ heads had exploded)

If anyone wants to really wind themselves up, pick up any random copy of ‘Scottish Tory Field’ Magazine.

There was a charming story in the last one I flicked through about an industrious young man who saved up two or three months wages working as a gillie or stalker on an estate in order to have his own duck hunting pond built.

In one paragraph he tries to pretend that by putting a pond in for the sole purpose of shooting ducks he was – “supporting the economy” (by buying shells I assume?) “helping manage watefowl populations” and most laughably “recreating valuable wetland habitat” (with the sole intent of blasting the inhabitants of said habitat back out of the sky?).

Throughout the magazine they love to present the image of hunting estate owners being ‘guardians’ of the landscape, which I suppose is true if you consider scorched grouse moors and barren, boggy deer slopes to the be the landscape’s ideal form… 🙄

I am not against so called “Re-Wilding” in principle. Deer are a pest where I live and the current landowners make no attempt to manage the deer population.
If “Re-Wilding” is to be worth while it must have people at heart. Particularly country communities. If it’s going to be just another source of cash to support large landowners be they private estates or NGO’s like National Trust Scotland, then I’m against it.

We have a lot of problems here in Norfolk with lazy gamekeepers placing pheasant feeders next to the roads so it is easier for them to access, meaning that many rural roads are covered in the stupid buggers, on the flip side, we do eat a lot of pheasant and duck!

As opposed to re-wilding, i think what is needed is a change often in farming practises, although with such a large population i can see why this would be difficult, but it is clear to see here where i am in Breckland with small field sizes, lots of trees and hedgerows and rotating of arable crops with pigs that we have so much more visible wildlife than the farms 20 miles down the road in the Fens which are table top flat and the field sizes are huge. Due to the loss of bee populations, many of the fields here are now edged the first 10m with wild flowers and again you can visibly see the increase in bees/ butterflies and the like.

When? All indications are that humans moved in as the ice retreated.

Seriously please go and read about the natural history of Scotland. It’s very interesting if that helps.

If anyone wants the book, I’ll post it for a Treesforlife donation.

I might take you up on that!

Trying to create an environment that never was.

In Scotland those hills used to be hooching with people and their cattle. The Highlands were not a wilderness.

Here’s a simple starter for you

http://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/human-impacts/deforestation/

…the vast, primeval wilderness that spread across about 1.5 million hectares of the Highlands...

bigjim – Member
Here’s a simple starter for you

http://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/human-impacts/deforestation/

And here’s the relevant section out of that.

…No one knows for sure what this wilderness was like..

In other words they are guessing.

There is however plenty of evidence of extensive human habitation in Scotland going back several thousand years, and evidence of large organised communities which means agriculture and pastoral activities and predator control.

And it’s highly likely that there is plenty more evidence buried under several feet of peat in the so called wild places.

Then there’s the effect of the various climate changes.

Any wilderness in Scotland predates human habitation, and that is a very narrow envelope after the melting of the ice. It is also quite possible that there was human habitation when there was ice, but the evidence of that would be long gone.

But you are arguing there was never a wilderness, and suggesting it went from ice to magically hooching with cattle farms, which is nonsense, there was a massive area of wilderness for many thousands of years, the human populations were nothing like that of today and would have incrementally crept up. I admire your persistence in the face of scientific evidence though – a job with the Trump administration awaits you.

I’d love to see some boar in the FoD. They might eat some of the sodding tourist and a few boar as well. Or is it the other way round?

Any wilderness in Scotland predates human habitation

No, it predates *agriculture*.

Ice age lasted until around 12,000 years ago, seems like agriculture was only brought into Britain something like 5-6,000 years ago.

But you are arguing there was never a wilderness, and suggesting it went from ice to magically hooching with cattle farms, which is nonsense, there was a massive area of wilderness for many thousands of years, the human populations were nothing like that of today and would have incrementally crept up. I admire your persistence in the face of scientific evidence though – a job with the Trump administration awaits you.

After the last ice-age, c.110,000 – c.11,700 years ago, the oldest evidence of human habitation in Scotland, near Biggar in Lanarkshire dates to c. 14,000 years ago, so within the last period of glaciation, and probably nomadic groups of hunters following migrating herds of horses or reindeer.
First permanent settlements seem to be around 3200-2800BC, the maximum extent of the ancient Caledonian forest came around came around 5000BC, arriving around 7000BC, the forest was greatly reduced in extent by 2000BC due to the climate becoming wetter and windier, from then human actions, including grazing of deer and sheep have reduced it to what it is now.
So there you go, climate change was largely responsible for the greatest reduction in the ancient Caledonian forests, humans just carried on what was already happening.
So if you want to re-wild Scotland you’ll have to try to extrapolate what it was like around 150,000 years ago, which I’d suggest is pretty much impossible.
Get rid of the commercial crop forests, encourage the spread of Scots Pine and whatever broadleaf trees will grow in the local terrain, probably scrub oak, birch, hazel and the like, and you’ll have something like what was there 5-7000 years ago.

bigjim – Member
But you are arguing there was never a wilderness, and suggesting it went from ice to magically hooching with cattle farms, which is nonsense, there was a massive area of wilderness for many thousands of years, the human populations were nothing like that of today and would have incrementally crept up. I admire your persistence in the face of scientific evidence though – a job with the Trump administration awaits you.

You’re using scientific evidence which is actually guesswork.

Farming would not have been huge cattle farms but more small community and family groups, but plenty of them.

My opinion is based on the remains of large numbers of settlements in the hills and mountains of the Highlands. Plenty more would have disappeared under the sea as the levels rose.

My opinion is not guesswork based on what I read in a book, it is based on the number of sites I have visited over the years and looking at how the terrain was used. Grab an OS map of the Highlands, pick what looks like a reasonable spot, and you will almost inevitably find traces of ancient human habitation.

There were substantial stone built settlements in places like Orkney and South Uist 8,000 years ago and artefacts have been dated back 10,000 years in other areas.

I am arguing that there were people around from the start, and just like your evidence, it is definitely guesswork.

However the opinion is based on the existence of groups of people today who still live in Arctic conditions, so why not our ancestors? We have evolutionary adaptations which are an advantage in Arctic conditions.

The point is there would have been very little time in which there would have been wilderness untouched by human intervention.

BTW I would not be surprised if the population of the Highlands was bigger than it is now, but that would just be guessing.

Thanks for the job offer with the Donald. He’s a cousin a few times removed*, but I would hate to take advantage of nepotism.

* not enough. 🙂

The beaver experiment worked though

We can always do with more beaver.

This. I chucked the Cornish beaver project £10 as part of their crowdfunding. Can’t see the issue with further releases, though I imagine some farmers might disagree.

While we’re on the subject banning (or at least removing subsidies from) grouse moors would be a good idea on many levels.

I still think people on this thread do not understand what rewilding means or may mean in a practical sense. This lot have a good stab at it

https://www.rewildingeurope.com/about/what-is-rewilding/

But still you are all having a good argument so crack on!!

@ratherbeintobago If you really want more beaver you’ll surely have to part with more than a tenner

a_a – the definition (working definition) of re-wilding there is helpful. The goal isn’t ‘wilderness’, but redressing the balance between what was, and the current environment.
Nobeer…. – you need to look up while out. We have red squirrels in the garden, red deer causing problems, hen harriers, otter cubs in the beck, quasi-relict arctic fish in the lake, alongside returned osprey. No bears or wolves though.

The goal isn’t ‘wilderness’, but redressing the balance between what was, and the current environment.

Exactly

boxelder – Member
a_a – the definition (working definition) of re-wilding there is helpful. The goal isn’t ‘wilderness’, but redressing the balance between what was, and the current environment…

Ah, Newspeak. They have changed the meaning of the world wild. No wonder some of us are confused.

Fair enough, but then really what they are proposing is simply an alternative method of cultivation and pastoral activity rather than wildness, or maybe simply an ersatz zoo.

I have no problem with that so long as there’s no fences and our countryside doesn’t get predators introduced after all the effort our ancestors went to to remove them, and above all the Highlands are not turned into a national park.

Caledonian forest came around came around 5000BC, arriving around 7000BC, the forest was greatly reduced in extent by 2000BC due to the climate becoming wetter and windier, from then human actions, including grazing of deer and sheep have reduced it to what it is now.

So there you go, climate change was largely responsible for the greatest reduction in the ancient Caledonian forests, humans just carried on what was already happening.

There’s more to Scottish natural landscapes, ecosystems and wilderness than Caledonian forest – that’s just one type of woodland, though to be fair at one time it did cover a decent chunk of the country, but certainly nowhere near all of it.