The Lynx Effect
The second week of January was notable in the Highlands for a good amount of snow, back-to-back weather warnings and the illegal release of four lynx cats. Lynx have been extinct in Scotland for hundreds of years – sadly, it turns out the recaptured lynx were starving and one has since died. Evidently, some rogue rewilders or, alternatively, some people who got bored of a sizeable Whiskers bill, emancipated some lynx, with no thought for the consequences – for the lynx, locals or several initiatives attempting to return this shy and elusive feline to our landscape.
Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
Why on earth do people want something bitey back in our spectacularly benign wilderness? At present, the scariest thing afoot is the wily yet innocuous fox. Truncating the science: ecosystems are highly complex and humans ballsed this up. We have been (mis)managing the Scottish wilderness for a really long time which should not be seen as legitimisation – just because we’ve always done something doesn’t mean we always should. Definitely not pertaining to ecology but Maya Angleou said something about when you know better, do better. We now know that clearing people from their lands and replacing them with sheep, will not only upset them, but also the fragile ecosystem.
I’m not a cat person but I can appreciate what a majestic creature the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) is. They have ear tufts which are simultaneously super cute and super cool. Aesthetics aside, the Eurasian lynx is Europe’s third largest predator and would be rather useful as a keystone species/biological mop and bucket. Their greatest impact in Scotland would likely be how they might interact with deer (interact = eat.) Actually, this is less free-for-all, feline Bambi massacres and more about changing the ways in which prey species behave. It would positively impact attempts to rewild and reinstate Scotland’s tree line through creating an ‘ecology of fear’ and so, unlikely as it sounds, reintroducing lynx would help more saplings reach maturity so they can sequester carbon and improve biodiversity. Lynx would prey on animals but, unlike the UK’s cats who kill 160 to 270 million animals a year, they’d be mostly roe deer which would benefit the ecological balance.
Walking through the snow last week, I could see the tracks of humans, domestic dogs, sheep, rabbits, and some red deer slots. We do have to feed people, people do have to earn a living but are we entitled to use every square inch of the earth’s surface to further the interests of one species? My mam would say that’s being greedy. Perhaps we need a shift of mentalities – less human-centric, more biocratic – and something that humans like less than things that might eat their livestock/babies is change. In some regards, predator reintroduction is the low-hanging fruit of ecological restoration – because you aren’t going vegan or never flying for your holidays again. There’s also something thrilling about rewilding with predators – it’s a mite more exciting than beach cleans or planting more native woodland. Wolves too are pretty sexy, in terms of ecosystem rebalancing (ok, and in terms of the Twilight Saga, sue me) but slightly less practical and understandably, a harder sell for a country that already has an interesting number of XL Bullies per capita.
I can afford to be pretty sanguine about the reintroduction of predators to the Highlands because I don’t have any livestock and my kids are too heavy for a moggie to drag one off into the undergrowth. However, if you do depend on livestock for your mortgage repayments, it’s possible that you won’t be nearly so chill. The truth is given the time elapsed since we hunted lynx to extinction, it’s rather hard to predict how they’ll interact with sheep. It’s probably not beyond the wit of man to establish a compensatory mechanism for livestock lost to predator reintroduction [like we do for Eagles – Ed] – especially given that we already subsidise agriculture rather a lot.
Conservation biologist Isla MacLeod, who also volunteers tracking wolves and lynx for the Slovak Wildlife Society in her holidays says, ‘I have a passion for lynx but this is absolutely not the way to do it. An apex predator would be a step in the right direction for Scotland. People are becoming increasingly aware that we have missing components of our ecosystem but you want to make sure that these animals are being reintroduced into an environment that is ecologically suitable for them but also socially and politically suitable for them.’ In layman’s terms, we shouldn’t be littering kitties about the place when they don’t stand a chance and due process hasn’t been followed.
Rewilding is arguably a bit of a euphemism – a more prosaic verb would be unhumaning – because the human hand is all too visible in the natural landscape and it’s anything but benign.
People say that millennials are the most entitled generation ever but it’s actually humans who are super entitled. We consider planet earth ours and get tetchy when anything might encroach upon this dominion. As such, the process for getting everyone to feel happy about having the bitey stuff walk among us once more is a long one. Lynx are shy creatures, highly unlikely to pose any threat to humans (they may even save lives by reducing deer-induced road accidents) but we can’t really know the impact of their reintroduction until we do it. Some environments just aren’t suitable for lynx – they need a good deal of tree cover and their preferred food (roe deer.) If we did reintroduce lynx (after having discussed it like grown-ups and agreed upon it) it would signal a sea change in how committed we are to undoing some of the anthropocenic damage we hairless apes have done. I for one would love to see the ear tufts making a comeback alongside our biodiversity.
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A very welcome article. I found the death of that lynx quite affecting, perhaps because it encapsulated so much that is wrong in our relationship with wild animals. Lynx and wolf populations are growing again in many parts of Europe where they once faced extinction: were local farming communities involved in this, and what has been their experience of it ?
Totally agree
Excellent article. Sheepdogs could be trained again to protect their flocks against predation by the lynx as you said, but also wolves. There is no evidence of lynx killing humans, and very little outside Disney, that wolves kill humans either. Rabid, starving or trapped wolves will attack people, but so do our dogs, every year: so-called pet dogs which as a group, are a direct cause of such as massive Amazonian forest removal to provide land for the growing of their feed
There is also evidence from Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
Agreed, a welcome article. It was clear early on that this wasn’t a ‘re-introduction’ event, but more a pet abandonment. Why people want to keep such animals as pets is beyond me. Apparently there are lots pf pumas, black panthers etc hidden in assorted private gardens all over the place, some licenced, some illicit.
What would we do, if there was a species above us that kept us as pets?
@Mark Bevis “a species above us that kept us as pets” was depicted in John Christopher’s Tripods series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods#The_City_of_Gold_and_Lead_(1967)
Yes, and the question “are we entitled to use every square inch of the earth’s surface to further the interests of one species?” begs another: how much of the planet should humans self-restrict to?
Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass have one proposal in Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change, and Pandemics (Verso 2022), providing some interesting background and modelling (although perhaps still too wrapped in old humanist language and thinking). The authors say that Half-Earth proposals have some roots in ‘toxic’ white supremacist, anti-immigrant, conservation colonialist politics, such as the naturalist-mystic-militarist apartheid South African government-backed WILD Foundation; and they want to rescue the proposal for socialists. p78 “The goals of Half-Earth socialism are simple enough: prevent the Sixth Extinction, practise ‘natural geoengineering’ to draw down carbon through rewilded ecosystems rather than SRM, and create a fully renewable energy system.”
https://play.half.earth
I think we have to be careful when making comparisons between human and non-human (‘natural’) governance, especially on metrics of success. What counts as a catastrophic loss short of extinction of a species? What is the humanist claim that extinct-in-wild species can be preserved in liquid nitrogen and reintroduced at some future date worth (see latest BBC Click)? Instead, what proxies for planetary health, and working down from that to ecosystems and communities, are appropriate?
remarkably balanced article.
as they say, no extinct animal problem is solved simply by throwong animals at the problem: for a start, it’s not fair to the animal.
Just over a year ago an English university had a symposium to discuss the following, “is Scotland ready for the reintroduction of the lynx?” I thought then, and still do, that the question was a perfect example of the mindset of the rewilding zealots. To hold that meeting in the South of England on a matter of importance to Scotland and our land use demonstrates the colonialist mindset of many of those rewilding zealots. These people are not interested in a debate but rather in bulldozing through their views regardless of Scottish opinion. I believe that if the lynx must be introduced then let it be introduced in England and after a few decades we Scots will see how it has gone. In the meantime, as many of the commentators and zealots seem to be based furth of Scotland, consider visiting Spain. It appears that the lynx is doing well at the moment. Follow that up if you will with a visit to Norway and Sweden, both of whom are having culls of the lynx. Leave your colonialism at home, listen to the natives, and learn. Scotland doesn’t need the lynx. What my country needs is repeopling of the empty places. Places that were cleared for the profits of others, including highland chiefs. We, the Scots, those born here and those who choose to make Scotland their home, will decide our land use and are capable of doing so without any interference or zealotry. Thank you.