CHAPTER EIGHT
Lynx and Wolves
British people, or at least a small proportion of them, currently live beside the greatest living hunter on Earth – larger and more powerful than a polar bear. We not only tolerate but laud the orca’s return to the waters of Shetland and the north-western coast of Scotland. On land, however, the story is very different. The largest carnivore we tolerate, and today less so than we have in decades, is a moderate-sized black and white member of the weasel family: the badger. The prospect of living with larger carnivores excites some, terrifies others, and leaves few indifferent.
And this is why most advocates of ecological restoration believe that if this deadlock is to be broken, then of the three large carnivores native to Britain – the lynx, the wolf, and the brown bear – the lynx, impossibly shy and secretive, a creature of dense woodland, is the most likely candidate for a return to our shores. Ironically, we know almost nothing about it. To learn more, we need to turn to the intrepid scientists of an equally little-known country – Belarus.
‘Where lynxes prevail, foxes will fail’. The sentence struck me for its wit as much as its content; scientific papers from Belarus are not always noted for the quality of their humour. But then the zoologists studying lynx in the Naliboki Forest of Belarus are not ordinary scientists either. They are field naturalists of extraordinary acuity. They can achieve, on a yearly basis, what I can only dream of – they can locate the dens of Eurasian lynx, and wolves, deep within a forest.
Even for professional nature guides, in countries like Finland or Poland with good populations of lynx, these mid-sized cats are as ghosts. I know professional guides in Poland’s Białowieża Forest who, living beside lynx every day, have never seen one. And in the Bükk Hills of Hungary, in 2017, I joined this club of ‘non-lynxers’ in one of the strangest encounters of my life. I was in a small clearing within the forest, watching butterflies, when a terrified roe deer shot across the long-grass meadow and back into the forest. Here, I could see that it was frantically fleeing from something. Something that, given the blank look in the deer’s eyes, did not want to make friends. The deer vanished seconds later into the deep undergrowth. I ventured in, sometime later, but I never saw the deer. Perhaps it had escaped. And I felt at least fairly sure that whatever its fate, I had, right in front of my eyes, been out-lynxed. Was it a lynx? Was it not? I will never know. And for some people, even those living beside this animal, that rather encapsulates the nature of the beast.
Lynx are best described, ecologically, as ‘mid-cats’. They are not lions or pumas or jaguars, but instead fill the next niche down. Lynx are, as we see them, timid animals – except, that is, when it comes to their superpower: the ambush of their main prey, which in most of Europe is the roe deer. Whereas wolves are generalists – both in terms of the range of landscapes they occupy and the prey they hunt – lynx are specialists. They ambush roe deer, generally within mature woodland or at the edge, using camouflage, a short stalk to bring them within metres of a strike, and then a devastating burst of speed. A recent, remarkable camera-trapped video from Finland shows a roe deer at a feeding station, and a lynx creeping up in its blind spot. The lynx bursts forwards onto the deer’s back, the deer buckles and then charges away – with the lynx still very much attached to its back. As the deer blunders into the woodland, and out of the camera’s view, we see the lynx flip underneath the deer to seize its throat between two lethal pairs of canine teeth. This is a what a modern European big cat hunt looks like; a hunt that, except for such moments as these, remains hidden from view within the confines of our continent’s larger woodlands. But in the past few years, more detailed studies of lynx, especially of those in Belarus, have revealed a more complex and surprising animal.
In Belarus, Vadim Sidorovich has studied lynx since the mid 1990s. Using thousands of hours of tracking, and camera traps, as well as more conventional telemetry, coupled with an amazing field instinct for finding dens that has grown more acute over time, Vadim and his team have invested more than 20 years now in the study of Europe’s ghost-cat. Rather than seeking an academic approach to such a shy and complex animal, the team have adopted a ‘non-academic research style’, providing proofs through field documentation and actual observation, rather than the mathematical simulation which has, in recent years, come to replace some ecologists’ connection with the field, and the actualities of animal behaviour. Their results have been fascinating, and they also show us how easily this silent hunter could, without interfering with us, live beside us once again in the future.
The team have found that the range of a lynx varies enormously depending on the animal, its size, age and position. Young males may occupy territories of only 10–30km2, but large territorial males can wander across far larger tracts of woodland, closer to 200km2 in size. Two to four females will live within an adult male’s home range, but if the lynx population grows, males will overlap more often, and, under ideal conditions for the lynx, you may have as many as three home ranges squeezed within 100km2. By way of comparison, the New Forest National Park – which, were it not for too many roads, dog-walkers and the relentless disturbance of a place where disturbance is legal and legitimised, would be eminently suitable for lynx – is around 560km2 in size.
Once born, lynx kittens are hidden well by their mothers; Sidorovich and his team usually find dens under fallen boughs or large log piles, or within old badger setts, abandoned beaver burrow networks, and even old abandoned wolf burrows. The most important factors determining the location of a lynx den appear to be protection from rainfall, from mosquitos, and from other predators, particularly wolves. The interplay of such species has been largely forgotten across most of Europe, and indeed only in countries like Belarus, where 80 per cent of the land still operates under predominantly natural processes, can we get some glimpse of the complex sharing arrangements that once took place in Britain more than a millennium ago.
During denning, the lynx mother often pursues a more varied diet of smaller prey – including red squirrels, mallard ducks and young hares. These she can readily carry back to her kittens. During this kitten-rearing time, the team have discovered that rather than a successful jump from a hidden place, the lynx begins in an ambuscade before a short stalk or sudden chase to capture its prey. All of this takes place against a fearful backdrop of fragile kittens; kittens that could easily go missing or be harmed by predators or weather.
When lynx kittens are small, the mother will move them as infrequently as she can, often keeping them in one secure site for as long as two months. But often, chance will intervene and force her paw; if human disturbance or wolf pressure in an area of forest increases, the mother must move her kittens as often as once a week. Often, she must then hunt with the kittens in tow; a tough challenge indeed. As the kittens grow older, the mother will often begin to tackle larger prey: deer, or grouse, from time to time. At times, there is evidence coming together to suggest that the adult male in an area will team up with the mother to hunt. In this case, the team have observed that prey is brought back more regularly to the kittens – and the success rate would appear to be greater; a trait observed widely in more readily watchable species, such as African lions, where pincer and ‘decoy’ movements are both common during the hunt.
During the snowy months, the life of lynx kittens becomes hard indeed. Tracking suggests the mother can move them for four to six days at a time, over distances as long as 70km in the snow. During this time, the female once again extends the menu, catching not only red squirrels and grouse, but also sometimes young beavers or wild boar. Based on the behaviour of leopards, one imagines that the female must quickly grab a juicy piglet, and make off with it into the forest, where the short-sighted boar cannot pursue her. A struggle with an adult boar, especially a male, would likely not end well for the lynx. Whilst over time the kittens will leave their mother to find food for themselves, it would appear that this process is ‘softer’ with lynx than in other species. The Belarussian team believe that young females can, for a year after birth, remain close to the mother, rather than being forced immediately out. The adult male, meanwhile, has an entirely different set of behaviours.
The life of an adult male lynx is geared heavily towards patrolling, scent-marking and territory maintenance – much like any mid-cat or big cat, notably lions. During the winter months, males wander along well-defined forest tracks or routes that they know well, often stopping as often as every 100m to scent-mark them. Male lynx, it seems, are deeply conservative animals. They meticulously pass, patrol and re-pass 40km2 or so of real estate, with a marked degree of consistency. Like bobcats and Canadian lynx, male Eurasian lynx call frequently from elevated spots. However, this behaviour soon becomes more dramatic. Male lynx can climb up to 30m, particularly in pines, to emit these calls. The Belarussian team have found scratch-marks this high, but it seems that male lynx only go to this effort if the population of competitors is high. In other words, he who climbs highest is perhaps most likely to attract females, and project his voice over the longest distance. Like most cats, it can also be surmised that lynx escape their own predators, such as larger wolf packs, by shooting up trees.
For a male lynx to successfully attract and retain females, the heart of his territory must incorporate top-notch hidey-holes, especially dense thickets and tunnels, where the female feels safe not only to mate, but also to leave her kittens. Finally, the male is also a creature of habit in the way that he hunts, often having favourite ambush points that he will use time and again, rather than hunting randomly across the landscape.
In recent years, however, the researchers have established that lynx may not be as antisocial or solitary as the scientific literature generally depicts. With an amazing degree of field knowledge now behind them, the Belarussian team made a particular study of a female, Hanna, and the adult male, Kazimir, with whom she was paired, and another pair, known as Bazyl and Bazylikha. They found that pair bonds between the animals could be strong indeed, keeping them together when the female didn’t have kittens to care for. Cooperative living throughout the cold season now looks more and more likely. In addition, the team have found tracks of up to four lynx – a female, her kittens and a sub-adult – all walking and hunting together, and, at other times, Kazimir walking with Hanna and her two kittens.
Whilst all of this detail is fascinating and much of it unknown to the British public, the Belarussian studies paint the picture of a cat as dependable in its daily habits as the domestic cats with which we are far more familiar. It is clear that lynx need large areas, use these areas non-randomly and with a high degree of selectiveness, do not like their kittens being disturbed and require prey to come to them, or past them, at favoured ambush spots. This all provides British conservationists with valuable information as to where the lynx, if reintroduced back into our country – as many conservation advocates now propose – could thrive.
There seems little doubt that finding food within our larger woodlands, especially in Wales or northern Scotland, or indeed the larger forestry plantations of Kielder, Galloway or Tayside, would pose little problem – for these are places where squirrels, roe deer and mid-sized birds are not in short supply. Were lynx able to inhabit, over time, quieter areas of the Forest of Dean or Wye Valley, home now to sizeable populations of wild boar, there is little doubt that their ability to snatch piglets would be to their advantage too.
Far more has come of the Belarussian study, however, than the ecological basics of how lynx use and occupy a wooded landscape. One of the more surprising elements has been the degree to which lynx control other predators and ‘regulators’ in the landscape – most of all, the fox. During their study of radio-tagged foxes in the forests of Paazierrie and Naliboki, the team found that more than half of the animals tagged ended up being killed by either lynx or wolves. During the denning periods of the lynx, especially, the necessity to kill foxes increases, as foxes can predate small lynx kittens. The team found that as wolves and lynx increased back to natural saturation point in the Belarussian forests, a situation still incredibly rare in Europe, the fox became something of an endangered species. It was found that lynx and wolves dealt with foxes in a different manner. Wolves excavate out a fox, whilst another wolf, lying in wait, pursues and kills it. Lynx, however, eradicate all the red fox cubs that they can get their paws on. Several years on, the fox has entirely changed its behaviour in the Naliboki Forest, spending 80 per cent of its time in grassy clearings. This alone renders the lynx a powerful ecosystem engineer because, as any conservationist or indeed gamekeeper will attest, the impact of foxes, in the absence of depredation, can be considerable.
Foxes, being mesopredators, have a broad diet, as evidenced by their ability to live within and indeed thrive in British cities. They are, however, regular predators of birds’ nests and chicks. It has long been argued that ‘fox control’ is a necessary part of conservation, especially for those ground-nesting orders, such as wading birds, cranes or even raptors such as harriers or merlins – and ecologically speaking, this is not untrue. What has been forgotten, however, is that if lynx and wolves both dominate an environment, foxes never reach saturation point. This only happens in prey-rich, large-scale environments, where lynx, especially, can attain relatively high populations. The ability of lynx to regulate smaller predators, and therefore reduce the impact of species like the fox, which in turn can exert excessive influence on smaller species such as ground-nesting birds, is one of the greatest powers exercised by lynx in their woodland environment. But their impacts upon deer are also considerable.
On average, when roe deer proliferate, they are the favoured prey of the lynx. If roe deer are present in good numbers, they can comprise up to 90 per cent of a lynx’s diet. The Belarussians found that a male will average one roe deer every six days; a female with dependent young kills a roe deer every four to five days. Other studies have sought to quantify to what degree such activity affects the deer within Europe’s larger woodlands, and one study achieved this by looking at what happened in eastern Poland, where lynx were hunted out of the landscape. Here, it was found that when lynx were removed from Polish forests by ourselves, the roe deer population skyrocketed. Though by no means the only factor in deer control (weather and forage reduction, and consequent starvation, being two others), the return of lynx to Poland’s forests saw a concomitant drop in the density of deer. In a Swedish study, Henrik Andrén concluded, after detailed research into kill rates by lynx on roe deer, and allowing for other factors (including fox predation of fawns, food and weather-related factors) that the lynx is a ‘very efficient predator on roe deer, capable of reducing roe populations to low levels’. This has enormous ecological significance when it comes to considering lynx reintroduction to Britain – where we face an overbrowsing situation by deer that is perhaps the worst on the continent.
In Britain, roe deer currently number half a million, of which around 150,000 animals live in England, and 350,000 in Scotland. Whilst deer have not been naturally predated by lynx for centuries, they have, nonetheless, increased further in recent years for a number of other reasons. Mild winters are thought to have played a part, and because so many of our woodlands border arable farmland, deer have been able to find ever more reliable winter food sources. The lack of brutal, long winters, familiar to our Victorian writers and chroniclers, has meant failure to weed out the sick and the weak. Roe deer, like other deer species – such as the alien muntjac, or the red deer, especially in Scotland – have become a rampant force in our woodlands. The effects of too many fearless deer, in a woodland, is not something readily observed.
The greatest effect of deer, in contrast to digging animals such as boar (which do not eat saplings), or large grazing animals (which tend to pluck vegetation), is that their browsing can effectively prevent the growth of future generations of trees. This is generally achieved by intensively browsing, or clipping off, new shoots, young leaves, and small branches, during a stage in the tree’s life where it is intensely vulnerable. This behaviour in deer is not seen in ecosystems where large predators remain, for the simple reason that browsing trees to death takes time – whereas a fearful group of deer, accustomed to being hunted by a large predator, are extremely unlikely to tackle any one tree, or sapling tree, for any sustained length of time, before moving on.
Therefore, in areas of Europe, especially woodlands in eastern Europe, where lynx, and sometimes wolves, conspire with more sustained human hunting pressure, a woodland is a very different affair to the gaping, open-floored forests we have become accustomed to in much of Britain today. In areas such as Białowieża, the ground flora is infinitely more developed – home to pristine carpets of flowers. The woodland edges of many Carpathian forests, in Hungary and Romania, are a riot of butterflies and their caterpillars, many of whom are feeding in the rich array of thorn, nettle, flowers and scrub left intact at the woodland edge. Bramble, which for all its toughness is readily digestible by deer, can be found far more readily at the woodland edge than in many British woodlands; feeding butterflies and providing invaluable nesting and sheltering sites for woodland-edge birds such as nightingales. New saplings, often prime candidates for overbrowsing by deer (including roe) here in the UK, are a considerably more common sight. They provide feeding grounds and song-posts for wood warblers and a whole suite of ‘small tree’ bird species. Some areas, especially in damp regions, grow dense with young bushes and thickets – the favoured home of nightingales, garden warblers or willow tits. In short, woodlands in the UK are now mown into a homogeny of bracken-covered floors; one of few plants unpalatable to deer. Often, this damage is subtle, and easily ignored – but only on visiting a English deer-fenced woodland, excluding deer from browsing within, does it become readily apparent the damage that deer do when left unchecked elsewhere. Our woodlands should be full of flowers, bramble, scrub, glades, ‘open’ sunlit floors and shady thickets. The return of the lynx would not solve all of these issues – it would, however, certainly help. And in promoting a richer and more varied woodland, the effects of the lynx are likely to be widespread, indeed, more so than has yet been studied. In fact, putting the lynx back into a relatively butterfly- or bird-poor forest in the UK is likely to have a greater effect than when lynx increase in Belarus, where so many species are, due to a lack of habitat degradation, already thriving.
Another surprising effect of lynx is its ability to enrich and transform woodland soils. Because lynx will generally not eat all of a deer carcass, feasting mainly on the freshest and best meat, the carcass is then left for a range of smaller meat-eaters to find. However, parts of some carcasses will remain, enriching the soil where they lie, and promoting the growth of new flowers and grasses.
There is one, final regulatory function the lynx provides – and this one almost beggars belief. Over many years of studying lynx and wolves side by side in Belarus, the team there found that contrary to all popular belief, and indeed much scientific lore, the lynx is often the regulator of the wolf – and not the other way around. In early studies, the scientists were curious to observe that wolves, upon smelling lynx, do not actively enter their den, or prey upon lynx kittens. Indeed, the only lynx found killed by another carnivore were male lynx killed by other males. Lynx, however, did not show the same deference to young wolves. In many years of study, the team found that lynx had killed wolf pups as old as six months, recording this as many as 10 times. In addition, lynx killed a pregnant female wolf. So whilst lynx are not known to tackle wolf packs, and would most likely lose, or die, if they did, they are perfectly capable of killing single wolves. Lynx do not eat those wolves that they kill: instead, this is known as ‘interference competition’, whereby organisms directly competing for resources may resort to predation, or aggression, to achieve their ends.
But the wolf’s fear of the lynx goes further than its reluctance to enter a lynx den. Camera-trapping studies show a lynx crossing a dead log ‘bridge’. Hours later, a wolf appears, but walks with extreme caution, fearfully inspecting the snowy lynx tracks with trepidation. Other camera traps have shown a pack of wolves approach a tree scent-marked by a male lynx. Rather than show signs of aggression, the wolves flatten their ears, adopting a clear posture of submission. In one startling camera-trap video, an eight-year-old lynx confronts an adult male wolf in the heart of Naliboki Forest. The lynx pins the wolf on its belly, biting it, and the wolf flees the scene, as the lynx returns to mark its scent-post. Later, another camera trap picks up the same, distinguishable but now gravely injured wolf. The lynx, it seems, may, in a truly pristine woodland environment, be the closest thing the wolf has to a natural predator. Indeed, in recent years, the team in Belarus have taken this supposition even further.
Since the recent increase of lynx in Naliboki, from 22 in 2013–14, to 60 by 2016–17, three major events have befallen the forest’s population of wolves. Firstly, the number of litters and pups have declined markedly. Secondly, and potentially as a result, the immigration of new adults and packs into the forest has markedly increased in the winter months. Finally, come spring, there is significant emigration by wolves out of the forest. The team have theorised that, if confronted with high densities of lynx prior to their denning season, wolves may move out of woodland and into more open lands.
The implications of this for how Britain’s ecology might once have functioned are profound. Just as Belarus is currently a country of 60 per cent native woodland cover, the rest being grasslands, farmlands, bogs and huge river systems like the Pripyat, so too it is thought that Britain, prior to Bronze-Age deforestation, would have had a similar amount of woodland cover, leaving around 20 per cent of scrub or scrub-grasslands, and 20 per cent of vast fenlands, prior to their drainage far later in our history. If lynx were dominant within our woodlands, this may well have meant that wolves could not operate well in such habitats, hunting instead in the margins, open land and floodplains where, as the more adaptable of the two carnivores, they would have thrived. It will be many decades before such dynamics are seen in Britain, perhaps even longer. Meanwhile, though, Europe’s most pristine country, Belarus, and its interlocking carnivores, provides a fascinating reminder of how apex predators do not only regulate ecosystems, but also regulate one another. For now, however, the quest of those seeking ecological restoration is to see lynx here in Britain at all.
Unlike the wolf, the lynx leaves virtually no trace, neither in the environment, nor in British or in fact most European folklore. Indeed, before the Belarussian studies, few sustained and intimate insights into wild lynx populations existed anywhere in Europe, reminding us just how low-key the animal can be, even in countries home to hundreds of lynx. But there are exceptions to the rule. Whilst lynx attacks on people are unknown, and this fact is now widely accepted, lynx predation upon sheep, whilst generally low, to very low, can vary – and at the higher end, it can be problematic, albeit not catastrophic. The question is whether the damage wrought by lynx, occasionally, on some flocks of sheep, might justify forever banning such a graceful and unique animal from returning to our shores, or outweigh the other benefits – social, economic and ecological – that returning this animal would provide.
On examining the evidence of how lynx interact with livestock, and thus with the livelihoods of farmers, it is always best to take the worst example first, if only in the name of fairness to those who oppose their reintroduction. In this regard, the worst and only noticeable effects of the lynx on livestock in the whole of Europe, come from Norway. Here, sheep are moved in a very different way to the UK. Often they are shepherded through, and then left within, wild, wooded environments – rather than open hillsides, pens, fences or fields. The result, unsurprisingly, is that by shifting sheep directly into the prime habitat of the lynx, sheep predation becomes considerably more commonplace. In a study carried out between 1994 and 1999, 34 radio-collared lynx killed a total of 63 domestic sheep, across six grazing seasons, averaging 10 animals per season. It was found that male lynx were by far the main culprits in this matter, with a far lower rate of predation amongst females. Norway’s lynx–sheep situation is, however, remarkable – insomuch as it does not occur elsewhere.
In the French Jura, where the landscape is more similar to many British uplands – with a harder demarcation between fields, some open grazing land, and forest – and sheep are not generally moved into wild woodland areas, perhaps a better field of reference exists for how lynx might adversely impact on livestock farms (indeed, there is little evidence from any group that lynx would impact adversely elsewhere). Here, clustered attacks within small areas were noted, these ‘hotspots’ often covering less than 4 per cent of the range of a lynx. Sheep taken here constituted around 3 per cent of lynx diet, and this was the highest percentage recorded across the studied area. The fact that the same, small hotspots of predation were identified each year, suggested two things to those involved in the study. First, that a relatively small number of lynx were involved in these attacks. Second, that particular features in the landscape may have aided ambush, or that particular husbandry techniques, in those areas, led to sheep triggering an ambush reaction from a lynx. In total, 80 per cent of studied flocks were never attacked during the study, meaning that the chances of a loss of livelihood among farmers was extremely low. The attacks were ‘episodic and sporadic’ – and in France, as in Germany, a compensation policy was adopted for when these took place. Currently, whilst the wolf raises far larger problems in farmed areas within Europe, in France, Germany and Switzerland, all sheep-farming countries living beside lynx, illegal persecution of lynx remains low, and farming remains viable.
It must be said that for all parties in Britain, especially famers, the prospect of living with lynx sounds far more dramatic, and radical, than what actually happens when lynx are back in the environment. Whilst a powerful steward of our woodlands, our foxes and our deer, and innately wonderful creatures in their own right, lynx are among the most ghostly of all animals, on a par with pangolins or Siberian tigers in terms of their public profile. That said, just because lynx are invisible, does not render them unable to dramatically improve local economies, or even effect a range of other outcomes too.
In Poland, lynx are broadly welcomed by foresters, because whilst they may scratch the odd tree, they save many more saplings and young trees from overbrowsing through the effects they exercise on roe deer populations. If lynx may be unwelcome for some UK sheep farmers, they would be considerably better news for arable farmers if hunting the woodlands adjoining those farms. By hunting deer at the woodland edge, lynx would reduce the impact of deer upon our crops; a multi-million pound ‘damage industry’ in Britain each year. What’s more, the impact of lynx upon cattle farming would most likely be either neutral, or positive. Lynx simply do not tackle calves; they are not evolved to, and there is no evidence that they do. Lynx do, however, displace badgers from their dens, and will kill badger cubs if given the chance. In doing so, they are likely to have some impact on badger densities around farms, something which, for reasons of bovine TB, may be broadly welcomed by farmers. And for those ecologists concerned about certain species, such as the wildcat, in the event that the lynx makes a return, the visionary conservationist Roy Dennis makes the following observation:
When I hear people say that we cannot bring back the lynx for fear of putting paid to the wildcat, I wonder if they understand the functioning of ecosystems for wildlife conservation. I remember one winter riding through deep snow in a Carpathian forest and coming across a wildcat eating the remains of a roe deer under a hazel tree. I had earlier followed the footprints of a lynx along a forest track. My hosts, experts on large carnivores, knew exactly where I had seen the wildcat because they had seen [the lynx] with its kill in the snow several days earlier. To them, lynx and wildcat were both simply part of the wildlife community in the mountains of Romania.
Instead of posing a threat to wildcat, the impact of lynx on fox and badger would undoubtedly, in my view, benefit the wildcat by reducing the numbers and ranging behaviour of its competitors. In the very long term, true recovery of wildcat may not be possible without restoring the lynx.
The final beneficiaries of returning the lynx, however, would be the majority of people living within communities local to lynx populations. As has been reliably documented in the Harz mountains of Germany, lynx, through their allure, mysticism and beauty, have the potential to draw ecotourists to an area – even if those tourists know, deep down, there is little chance of actually seeing a lynx. The Harz mountains, indeed, act as a good region in which to study the practical and economic effects of lynx in the landscape. Here, lynx have been returned to the landscape for the first time in 200 years. The allure of seeing wild animals has seen £12.8 million invested in the local economy, a small and predominantly rural community comparable to many of our own. But only 12 per cent of those who visited, among respondents, said that in retrospect, they would not have travelled had they thought they wouldn’t see a lynx. In other words, it is often the allure of lynx, the knowledge that they are there, sharing the landscape, the mere prospect of a glimpse that can, reliably, drive tourism and see millions invested in those areas where lynx are present. More than half of those respondents visiting the Harz cited lynx as a primary reason to visit, and the geographic pull of those visitors came from across the northern half of Germany, not only the immediate vicinity. In addition to walking in the presence of the lynx, Harz locals have cleverly monetised the potential of the animals. In addition to an enclosure where the public can see captive lynx, set for future release, there are also tracking tours and the inevitable gift shops.
The Harz is a large, forested area, capable of sustaining both tourist pressure and a viable, wild population of lynx – with enough space and solitude to ambush in peace, call, mate, raise kittens in a den, move said kittens and roam across the landscape at a 100km level. There are in Britain only a few regions in which this could viably happen, most of which are in Scotland. It is therefore important to accept that lynx will not single-handedly solve the British deer problem, nor will they, sadly, flourish in the road-bisected, dog-trodden small woodlands in much of southern England. But nor should we be too conservative as we think about how these cats could live beside us in other areas. Provided lynx have remote, prey-rich landscapes, and those landscapes are wooded and undisturbed, it appears they can flourish. And this leaves several areas of Britain eminently suitable for their return.
On the border between England and Wales, the combined woodlands of the Dean and the Wye, the latter linear but steep, dense, and slinking westwards for miles into Wales, may still be large enough for lynx, and are most certainly prey-rich enough for their needs, packed with roe, boar piglets, squirrels, ducks, rabbits and rodents. A relatively dense network of roads bisects the area, and tourism and walking pressure is high. This area might be able to sustain lynx, but it is unlikely that this is where anyone would begin when contemplating such a bold move in conservation as the restoration of Britain’s largest contemporary cat. Indeed, it is in the darker, steeper, denser and less accessible woodlands of somewhere like Afan Forest, in South Wales, which, by joined moorlands and plantations, extends north-westwards to Llandovery and then into Snowdonia, may provide a larger, quieter corridor for lynx to hunt and move. But with up to 80 per cent of the Welsh land mass given over to sheep, it is somewhat unlikely that the lynx will land here first.
In northern England, significant tracts of quiet, dense woodland also exist – many of these unnatural, being spruce plantations of otherwise poor wildlife value, relative to their enormous size. However, the combined acreage of Kielder, extending northwards into Hawick Forest and then, in a largely unbroken web of forests, west, eventually into the enormous Galloway Forest Park, would, most certainly provide the acreage, space, feeding and breeding requirements for the lynx. But it is further north, in areas of Scotland already heavily given over to woodland, reforesting and rewilding, where perhaps the soft paws of the lynx might first tread this land for the first time in centuries.
Here, in areas like the Cairngorms National Park, rich mosaics of ancient Caledonian pine and forestry are already well protected, continuous, growing, and home to other shy giants of the woodland, including most of Britain’s remaining capercaillies. Furthermore, such habitat extends, via remote and narrow glens, into the woodlands of Deeside, to the east, the woodlands of Forres and Fochabers, to the north, and, from Inverness, into the quiet and remote woodlands that run the length of Loch Ness to Fort Augustus, Fort William and beyond. Once established in such an area, it is likely that the lynx, accustomed to becoming the ghost of Europe’s woodlands, would be able to thrive – finding dens and hunting sites away from people, hiding away in the many steep or little-trodden hillside woodlands of the glens. This part of the north-east Highlands is striking not only for the degree of woodland cover, wildness and seclusion, but also for the fact that major roads (which could cause damage to such a low-density, slow-breeding species, as has happened with the Iberian lynx) are conspicuous by their absence. Additionally, huge tracts of habitat within the Cairngorms, south or north of Loch Ness, and around Deeside, are home to just one major road. In this large, low-intensity and heavily wooded landscape, it is widely thought by those that support ecological restoration that the lynx – fulfilled by the hundreds of thousands of roe deer, as well as red squirrels, mountain hares, ducks and some grouse – would thrive. And from just two or three reintroductions, over the course of a few years, this magnificent cat could once again be an established inhabitant within the woodlands of our own island.
But there is of course another. One more powerful. One whose strength lies in the pack. In mainland Europe it now wanders through farms and villages by night, and hunts quietly in the woods and mountains beside them. In Britain, to even speak its name is to conjure howls. We are not ready for it yet. But if one day the wolf returns, and we can, in some parts of our country, learn to live beside it – it would change the British landscape forever.
It is perhaps one of the great ecological ironies that we cultivated man’s best friend from what for many would still be seen as man’s worst enemy, the wolf. Our battle to de-wolf Britain began early on in our history, and with an increasing, organised ferocity until the animal’s eventual extinction. The prominent ecological historian Derek Yalden estimated that there would have been around 6,600 wolves present in Britain prior to their persecution, based upon the range sizes currently found in Poland’s Białowieża Forest, although even these have been depressed through hunting. Yalden estimated a similar number of lynx.
Whilst there is little trace of how the lynx vanished from Britain, with early deforestation and removal of its prey-base, due to human hunting, deemed as likely as direct persecution, the wolf was a more adaptable animal, and hunting played a far bigger role in its demise than habitat loss. Indeed, whilst wolves do inhabit forests, they are arguably just as successful in mixed, semi-open landscapes. As this is written, wolves are thriving not only in the deep, dense forests of places like Romania, but also in the Alpine farmland edges of Italy, the farms of eastern Poland, the open meadows and wood pastures of Portugal, the treeless steppes of European Russia and in the dwarf-birch clad taiga of Finland. So even as we deforested Britain, it would be our hunt for the wolf – deep and direct – that precipitated its demise.
As early as Anglo-Saxon times, records were made of King Edgar demanding, from Wales, the skins of wolves as a tribute, at a time when wolves were especially common on the wooded borders of England and Wales. Wolf bones have been found widely in Anglo-Saxon burials, and places like Woolpit, in Suffolk, named as early as the writing of the Domesday Book, are thought to have referred to ‘wolf-pits’.
At this time, wolves were still abundant, especially in the forested and upland areas of Britain, but their systematised hunting began early on. Some criminals, rather than being put to death, were required to provide wolf tongues instead – one imagines that more than a few may have perished attempting such a feat. The Anglo-Saxon chronicles, however, document a far more organised and well-regimented hunting operation. A closed season of wolf-hunting for the nobility would begin in the ‘wolf monath’, or month, of January, continuing into late March. This was Britain’s wolf-cubbing season. At this time, hunters would sometimes hunt wolves actively with spears and dogs, but more often placed pitch within woods frequented by wolves. However, in dry summers they would also seek out and kill wolf cubs. It is often forgotten that wolves were not only hunted because they competed with the nobility for deer, or threatened livestock, or us. Wolves were also hunted for their pelts, which were deemed of greatest quality during the denning months.
By Norman times, servants to the kings, until 1152, were tasked with ridding the land of wolves, which, even at this time, appeared to have become rare in southern England. As late as 1212, a bounty of 12 shillings was paid out for a wolf killed in Hampshire which, at that time, would have been a very significant payment for someone working on the land. Like so much of British wildlife extermination, the prospect of significant sums of money, especially for the wolf, would have motivated those in every region of England to hunt these animals down. That said, by this stage, there were already few wolves left in the predominantly forest-free areas of southern England, and so one imagines that any appointed wolf-hunter may have become more and more professionally disappointed as time went on. In the late 1100s, there was still a healthy wolf population in Wales, as Giraldus Cambrensis recounts wolves emerging from the woodlands to eat the putrid corpses of battle left from when Henry II attacked the country in 1165.
By 1281, the death knell would come for remaining English wolves, as Edward I ordered the extermination of all the wolves in England. At this time, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire were, even as they are to a lesser degree today, more heavily wooded, and less populated, than southern England at this time, and it was here that Edward’s wolf-hunters turned their attention. If one man in history has been reliably documented to have removed more wolves than any other, it was Sir Peter Corbet, on behest of Edward I – a legendary hunter of the time. For nine years, Corbet and his pack of hounds traversed what would at that time have been vast woodlands – and by 1290, when one of the last wolves was killed in the Forest of Dean, the wolf in southern England became a thing of a past; consigned to myth. Wolves would persist in England for longer, in what are still wilder areas of our country, like the Forest of Bowland, in Lancashire. But further laws would be enacted to seal the wolf’s demise, and they are thought to have been removed from England, or relict refugees, by the reign of Henry VII in the late 1400s.
It is a reminder that Scotland was de-wilded far later than England, that wolves would persist here for at least another three centuries, perhaps longer. Indeed, wolves still thrived in Scotland as late as the 1500s, when Mary, Queen of Scots, hunted for them in 1563. By the latter end of the century, large clearances of forest across the southern uplands would drive wolves into ever greater conflict with our expanding livestock, and farming. In 1577, James I made wolf-hunts compulsory and from here on, within a century, the wolf would all but vanish from the Scottish landscape. Whilst one famous record states the last wolf was slain in 1743, it is deemed more likely that wolves, being able to persist at low density, cleverly evading people and haunting remote and marginal areas when hunted fiercely, may have persisted in Scotland until the 1790s, or, indeed, even the nineteenth century. But they persist no more. Britain has no wolves – nor will they ever return except at our behest.
Given the extraordinary efforts our ancestors made to rid us of wolves, it is perhaps wise to at least begin with the notion that some logic dictated their actions. Albeit hunted out during a period of burnings, witch-trials and public hangings, there was reason, at that time, for removing wolves. They competed against those nobles who kept deer on their land, at one end of the wealth spectrum, but they also hunted sheep and sometimes, very young cattle. The more we deforested, the more they came into contact with us. That said, our determination to remove every single wolf, even from areas like the Welsh Marches where, it seemed, they stayed largely away from us and within dense woodlands, suggests that wolves occupied our imaginations, and fears, far more than they actually threatened the average person, or farm, on a daily basis. Indeed, by the time wolf edicts were issued, the species was already rare in the more populated parts of Britain, and was clearly, even at that time, a refugee of forests where, no doubt, it had learned to keep well away from people. That said, in a time before technology, before subsidies, before modern farming methods, wolves would have threatened farms, reduced productivity and some have argued that the burgeoning British wool industry – now virtually extinct, but hugely lucrative at the time – may owe a lot of its success to the removal of the last wolves from England and Wales.
Today, Britain has become one of the last European countries not to be repopulated with wolves. It is not that wolves have been consciously put back into many neighbouring European countries. It is that, in the absence of sustained and intensive persecution, in some cases, they have, rather, crept back in. Right now, the nearest wild wolves to Britain can be found in the Veluwe area of the Netherlands, and, across the Channel, as many as 530 adult wolves, in over 40 packs, are now living in France, of which most live in the heavily forested areas of the Jura. The wolf is on our doorstep – but should we let it in? The first question to ask, then, might be what wolves do – and what benefits they might bring if we could ever learn to live beside them once more.
Wolves are, among predatory species, the ultra-engineers of a landscape. More powerful than lynx, they shape the behavioural dynamics of many other species, both smaller predators and prey. Their effects upon ecosystems are well documented, and those effects grow as wolves reach saturation point within a landscape. Whilst a lone pair of wolves may have little effect upon a landscape, a landscape-level population of wolves, consisting of multiple packs can, given time, and the absence of persecution, transform that landscape completely. In this regard, the single most important thing wolves do is plant trees.
The primary effect of wolves in a landscape is upon the ungulates, especially deer, but also elk – another lost giant of our shores – which, if left to its own devices, is capable of significantly denuding a landscape. Anyone doubting the impact of red deer in the Scottish Highlands, for example, has only to visit the heather-smooth hills here and wonder where the trees have gone, and why they aren’t growing back, to understand that deer can both denude – and maintain a denuded state – within landscapes where they are not actively hunted. The same is true of elk – larger even than the red deer, and a good species for maintaining open glades and trimming back willow, aspen and birch scrub, but, in large numbers, unchecked by predators, a mowing force within a landscape. And in this regard, whilst to some readers a familiar tale, it is still worth recounting what happened to Yellowstone National Park, in the USA, its landscape, and its animals when wolves were reintroduced.
By the 1920s, whilst otherwise well protected as a wilderness, Yellowstone had been cleared of its wolves, as indeed had occurred, sooner or later, in most of the western world. Because Yellowstone was studied intensively after the departure of its wolves –an intensity that was never applied to Britain’s de-wolfing in the 1600s – even early on the alarm was sounded as to what was happening to the park. The landscape was visibly degraded. Huge herds of wapiti (Cervus canadensis), a large deer akin to our own red deer, roamed freely, without fear. Plants were dying off, and new trees failing to grow as the deer munched and nibbled unchecked.
It was discernible that the ecosystem was incomplete, and in 1995, after having carefully confined Canadian wolves in a large enclosure within the park, into which was snuck a tasty wapiti carcass, so as to acclimatise the animals to their new range – the grey wolf was once again released into the wild. From here on, one female, ‘#9’, gave birth to the park’s first pups in the wild. Since then, numbers and packs have increased; as of 1 April 2019, 61 wolves roam Yellowstone in eight packs, although total wolf numbers now fluctuate between around 80 and 110. The wolf is now back in sufficient numbers, and density, that scientists have been able to measure its effect upon the landscape.
In the years that wolves had been absent from the park, wapiti, and other deer, had had things all their own way. Whilst bears and mountain lions exercise some impact upon wapiti populations, wolves are the main regulator of wapiti numbers. In this regard, wolves perform two key functions: they cull, and they instil fear. On their return to Yellowstone, rising wolf numbers have killed twice the number of wapiti that was predicted. However, as the wapiti now recognises the wolf as a predator, an even more vital new factor is injected into the ecosystem – and that is the factor of fear. For the first time in decades, constantly wary and fearful of predation, the wapiti move around. And this transforms the ecosystem entirely.
Much as in the Highlands of Scotland, willow and aspen are two of the most vital trees in Yellowstone, if given a chance to grow. They line waterways, provide rich forage for beavers, provide shelter and nest sites for birds, and feeding sites, as rich invertebrate banks, for many other species. They are also the prime forage of the wapiti. By constantly moving wapiti through the landscape, as much as hunting them, wolves have slowly begun to transform the very nature of the wooded landscape in Yellowstone. And one fact is perhaps most surprising of all. There are now three times the number of wapiti in Yellowstone as in the 1960s, when wolves were absent. And yet, in spite of this, there has been an immense resurgence in willow. The key factor is not predation – but fear. Just as sparrowhawks change bullfinch behaviour by keeping these fat finches secretive, obscure and bound to scrubland habitat, so wolf pressure means that wapiti can nibble and trim willow, and help maintain open spaces for other species to thrive – but they can never linger long enough to browse these species into oblivion. Furthermore, under pressure from wolves, herds of wapiti break into smaller groups, to avoid detection, or lower their profile to wolves. Now, studies within Yellowstone show that in the past decade alone, millions of new aspen and willow saplings, which, under intense browsing pressure from wapiti, would simply have been denuded or maimed beyond repair, have begun to grow once again.
As the landscape has become more wooded, especially in rich alluvial areas like river valleys where willow naturally takes root the fastest, the wolf has turned out to be the saviour of another of our ecosystem heroes – the beaver. In this regard, another fascinating experiment was conducted in Yellowstone. It was shown that whilst those young trees coppiced or chewed by beavers turned into new, healthy stands of willow, those that were, additionally, browsed by wapiti, had only a 6 per cent chance of recovery after a few seasons, compared to an 84 per cent chance if coppiced by beavers – but not browsed afterwards by wapiti. In other words, whilst willow and aspen are, as in Europe, perfectly adapted to thrive under the stewardship of beavers, it requires another ecosystem architect – the wolf – to protect them from overbrowsing by deer. In short, wolves in Yellowstone are creating healthier trees by keeping wapiti fearful and mobile – and in doing so they are helping beavers too.
Across Yellowstone in the past two decades, watercourses have become, once again, diversely wooded and shrubby – leading to a boom in the small mammals, birds and insects that can thrive there. And with beavers discovering a new abundant food source throughout the winter, all their extraordinary effects upon the landscape, as noted earlier in this book, have also come to pass. In this regard, the effect of wolf, in enhancing the role of the beaver, has percolated down through every arena of life in Yellowstone, from its spawning fish to nesting birds and wetland floral diversity. But the wolf effect does not end there.
In ecosystems devoid of successful pack predators like wolves, even otherwise healthy or functional ones, such as areas of the Caledonian Forest in Scotland, one of the many forgotten ingredients of biodiversity is the presence of carrion within the landscape. In some parts of Europe, like the hills of Spain, carrion remains a part of the farmland ecosystem, insomuch as cattle die and can still legally be left on the hills – one of the reasons for the extraordinary abundance of vultures, and other large birds of prey, in areas of central Spain such as Extremadura. But with wolves in the game, the presence of carrion within a landscape transforms its ecology dramatically. Prior to the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, harsh winters and starvation were the main factors acting upon the wapiti population. But these tend to produce seasonal, not year-round casualties. In the presence of wolves, a landscape is fed with carcasses all year-round.
American Indian legends that ravens follow wolves (something that has recently been observed in Poland’s Białowieża Forest as well) soon came true, as these intelligent corvids came to associate wolf packs with the presence of food. Eagles, magpies, coyotes and bears all benefited from wolf kills – but so did at least 57 species of beetle dependent upon carrion; beetles that in turn feed small mammals, and insectivorous birds. And in looking at Yellowstone, it is of little surprise that many ecologists now regard the wolf as one of few species capable of saving the remaining large-scale, rural landscapes of Britain – most of all, huge swathes of the Scottish Highlands.
Whilst the lynx may prove a powerful force in regulating our woodlands and the smaller browsing animals that denude them, the ecological effect of wolves is considerably more powerful. Able to predate red deer – a very similar species to wapiti – and indeed proven to do so across Europe, wolves would both limit the numbers of red deer currently denuding vast tracts of northern Scotland and instil within them an entirely new behaviour, one which even deer-stalking cannot replicate: fear, and the continual need to move. It is widely held that the presence of wolves alone, even in relatively small numbers, and carefully regulated, if not regularly culled, would still transform the northern Scottish landscape over a matter of decades. The greatest single benefit would be the regeneration of huge areas of native woodland, especially pioneer species such as willow, aspen and birch, and the consequent removal of millions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. Trees are also the most effective land cover for maintaining water quality; natural sponges that slowly sequester water, helping it soak into the soil and filtering rainfall into our rivers and streams. The economics and ecological sense of natural mass arboreal regeneration alone make wolf reintroduction a credible consideration for discussion in the years to come.
But the effects would extend far beyond this. In creating a landscape of fear within northern Scotland’s wild areas, wolves would dramatically enhance its waterways and waterside trees. Their presence would improve life for Scotland’s golden and white-tailed eagles, but at other times, it would be their ability to terrify, kill and reduce orders of smaller predators that would become of great importance – including to some of our most beloved birds.
It has been observed from Yellowstone, where wolves greatly reduce numbers of coyotes, to eastern Europe, where wolves in countries like Belarus remove large numbers of foxes, that where you have a large predator, the mid-sized predators of similar kind, like the fox, tend not to fare so well. In a Scotland once again haunted by lynx and wolves, the population of the fox, and its impact upon other species, especially ground-nesting birds, would most likely be heavily reduced. As many populations of species like curlews, now free-falling in numbers across the UK, depend not only upon good areas of food-rich habitat but also relatively low levels of ground predation, the effect of wolves (which rarely bother to eat birds’ eggs or chase smaller birds) would likely provide protection to those species for whom the fox is a persistent and serious predator, as surely as the presence of goshawks reduces densities of crows and magpies, alters their behaviour and provides relative safe-zones for smaller nesting birds.
It has been widely observed that Britain is beset by mid-level predators, or mesopredators, many of which have, in aggregate, a powerful effect upon the eggs and nestlings of birds. From the pine marten’s impact upon capercaillies and goldeneyes in northern Scotland to the impact of the badger upon the nests of species like wood warbler and woodcock, or upon the humble hedgehog, Britain’s mesopredators have, for a long time, been able to rule an ecosystem where they are not meant to be in charge. For centuries, another apex hunter, humanity, has supressed these orders, though often to protect our own interests, whether farming or hunting, rather than the longer-term interests of the ecosystem. Now we have a situation where in some places foxes are hunted, whereas in others they are not. In some areas, sudden badger culls spring into being, often for spurious reasons that might be addressed by vaccination. In other areas, weasels or stoats may be removed. But there is no consistent, regulatory force to these occasional human depredations on a par with the continuous, 24-7 threat of a lynx pair, or wolf pack, to regulate mesopredators continuously, keeping them moving, killing some and shifting others out of entire habitats, or to the very margins. And that brings us back, again, to the brilliant Belarussian naturalists of Naliboki Forest.
In Scotland, studies have found that badgers average between one and eight individuals per one square kilometre. Anyone who has spent any time in the Caledonian Forest will know that whilst crepuscular and elusive, badgers are common animals, as indeed they are across many other wooded parts of the UK. By contrast, in Naliboki Forest, even now that the badger has recovered from the impact of alien racoon dogs, the population sits at a stable, healthy but considerably lower 30 badgers per one hundred square kilometres. And camera-trap studies on badger setts here suggest that there are two reasons for this – one is a felid, and the other is a canid.
In Naliboki, lynx visit badger setts year-round, often waiting patiently until cubs emerge from the den, before striking. Impatient lynx, however, will sometimes try and scare badgers in the sett, such that they run out from one of the other entrance holes. Wolves most visit badger setts during the denning period; if just a few badgers are at home, wolves will often predate them, although they rarely bother to decimate a full sett as this takes them too much time. In May, some badgers abandon their setts completely as soon as wolves move in to start denning here. The effect of wolves and lynx upon badgers is thus twofold. Firstly, by killing badger cubs, wolves and lynx both reduce the reproductive rate of the species. In Belarus, the majority of badgers at any one time do not have active litters. Secondly, wolves and lynx continually displace and move badgers on, which further interferes with their life cycle. This renders the badger considerably rarer, and more of a low-density animal, than here in Britain where, in our predator-free and simplified landscape, the badger attains some of the highest densities in the world. However, by reducing both foxes and badgers within a landscape, wolves and lynx open up new outcomes for a whole range of other species.
We have grown up in a culture where cheeky foxes and Badger, immortalised in The Wind in the Willows, are, for most of us at least, treasured creatures – and there is perhaps no harm in this. Species like badgers are smart, resourceful, striking and their presence sends a thrill down the spine of any observer. Such sentiments are, however, unlikely to be shared by a nesting woodcock or young hedgehog. Badgers are, in truth, just one nicely striped player in our ecosystem – an ecosystem designed, over millions of years, to be regulated by other, more powerful cornerstone species than badgers; species, which, in turn, free up space for the small and vulnerable to survive.
The complex effects of wolf and lynx may never again be felt in all or even most of our landscape. As our woodlands regrow, it seems likely that the lynx, ghost-like and invisible, shunning open habitats, pasture farmlands and us, would integrate more easily into the British countryside, in those larger wooded areas quiet enough for it to make its home. As for the wolf, it may be decades, or more, before a nation still struggling with beavers, and boar, can bring itself to accept an adaptable, brilliant and far-ranging predator; a predator that will, undoubtedly, take livestock, and in other ways make its powerful presence felt within the landscape. Cultural change, technological change and a far greater acceptance of what wolves do, and the benefits they bring, will not develop in the course of one generation alone.
As this is written, wolves have been watched quite harmlessly scuttling through the streets of German Saxony in daylight, as little feared by most as a fox on the streets of Bristol. Other cultures are already adapting their attitude to wolves – and in place of outright fear and ferocity, there is not only acceptance but also, in some cases, mere indifference, too. It is unlikely, however, that as long as intensive sheep farming persists at scale, that indifference or acceptance will reach every sector of society. The question is whether it must – or whether it should. But other species, like the lynx, leave a far lower social footprint. It seems most likely that their time will come first.
One day, as we grow ever more aware of the need to repair our natural world – a journey that is already decades underway – and the small but loud lobbies fearful of wild animals grow ever quieter, as their own industries diminish or change over time, there will come a time once again where we have the space, mentality and wildness to live beside the only hunters to match us in skill; those that we meticulously hunted out centuries before. When we do, the natural world will grow ever richer, and, as our own acceptance stretches, so too will the sea of trees and layered song that belong to the realm of the Hunter.