Is Reintroducing Wolves Back into Britain Howling Mad
By Andrew Malone
Out in a remote Scottish glen, where golden eagles still soar and the
bellow of rutting stags echoes around the mountains at dusk, Paul
Lister was last week careering around one of Britain's last great
wildernesses in an open-topped, all-terrain vehicle.
Mr Lister, multi-millionaire heir to the MFI furniture dynasty, was in
his element. Laughing and shouting about his 'vision' for the land, Mr
Lister appeared to be the latest in a line of wealthy eccentrics to
buy an estate in Scotland and live the high life at what's known
colloquially as 'the big hoose up the glen'.
It would be easy to form that impression but wrong. Mr Lister's
mission last week around this wild land was deadly serious.
He was checking his perimeter fences were intact and making sure
electricity was coursing powerfully along the wires.
The fences, 9ft high, have been electrified. The landowner doesn't
want any of his wild beasts to escape. The majestic call of stags will
soon be eclipsed by a more blood-curdling sound: packs of wolves
howling in the Highland night.
More than two centuries after the last wolf in Britain was hunted down
and killed, Mr Lister is creating a wilderness reserve where two packs
of the predators will be free to roam living off abundant deer on
the mountains, chasing them down as wealthy tourists watch from Land
Rovers on 'safari' below.
Dubbed the McSerengeti by locals, the idea has been copied from the
upmarket Shamwari game reserve in South Africa, where wild animals
driven virtually to extinction by poachers and human encroachment,
including lions and elephants, have been successfully reintroduced
behind a giant fence.
Backed by Virginia McKenna's Born Free Foundation and leading
international wildlife experts, Mr Lister is spending millions at
Alladale Estate in Sutherland to reintroduce the so-called 'Big Five'
of ancient British animals grey wolves, European brown bears, lynx,
beaver and elk.
Unique in Europe, the 120 square mile 're-wilding' reserve will also
have its original eco-systems and ancient Caledonian forests restored,
with wild boars turning over the soil for food and the other animals
living as they once did across much of Britain 2,000 years ago.
Unlike a safari park or zoo, the animals will not be fed by humans.
Instead, they will live and die as nature intended: eating or being
eaten by each other.
'We are going to let animals take priority,' Mr Lister said. 'Nothing
is better than seeing 20 deer being chased by five wolves. We have
lost all connection with nature in this country. ...
...But not everyone has welcomed this new monarch of the glen. Locals
are horrified about the prospect of the re-introduction of wolves,
which were hunted to extinction in Britain because of the threat they
posed to farm animals and humans.
The last wolf in Sutherland was killed in 1743 slain after it
attacked two youngsters walking home to their croft. Both died from
their injuries.
While animal experts stress that the likelihood of a wolf attacking a
human is remote, local people in Sutherland are yet to be convinced.
At the Bonar Bridge Hotel, 15 miles from Alladale, the mood was
rebellious.
'What about our children?' said Carol, who, like many Highlanders,
works in the seasonal tourist trade. 'What if one of these beasts
attacks and kills one of our children? So what if there's a fence!
People can get out of prison. I don't see why wolves can't get out of
parks.'
Saying people fear attack by wolves, bears and boars, Davie Black, a
wildlife expert with Ramblers' Association Scotland, added: 'This is
the key question are they potentially dangerous to the public? Our
members have concerns about these animals.'
Attacks by wolves on humans are rare but they do happen. Less than
two years ago, a search party found the partially consumed body of
Kenton Joel Carnegie, 22, in the woods of northern Canada, where up to
60,000 wolves roam. Carnegie had gone for a walk and didn't return to
his camp.
Paul Paquet, an ecologist who investigated the case, blamed the attack
on wolves losing their natural fear of people.
After three wolves were hunted down and killed as the prime suspects,
Mr Paquet warned that humans eating and walking near the animals could
prompt more attacks.
While wolves have been successfully reintroduced across much of Europe
Paul Lister has worked with the Carpathian Wolf Sanctuary in
Romania, where more than 3,000 of the creatures roam there has been
fury among farmers in the Pyrenees about hundreds of sheep being
savaged and driven over cliffs in panic while being stalked by wolf
packs.
Yet Lister dismisses the prospect of attacks on humans, stressing that
the 120-mile electric fence will keep people safe.
'The animals will also have satellite chips stitched under their
skin,' he said. 'There's no way they are going anywhere. We will know
where they are at all times. And if they did kill a sheep? How much is
a sheep worth? £20? I'll pay any farmer for any losses. We need to
embrace the future.
'We need to make sacrifices if we are to preserve these animals for
our children.'
But, on these lands there is another species that is treated with
almost as much suspicion and fear as any wild beast: the wealthy
English male, determined to 'transform' the Scottish Highlands.
At Croik Church, a sacred place to Highlanders and less than five
miles from Alladale, signatures can still be found scratched on the
windows by people seeking sanctuary after being driven off their land
by rich, often English owners to be replaced with sheep. The
Highland Clearances, which saw hundreds of thousands evicted, were
brutally carried out by landlords in 1845 in Sutherland.
Families were split up. Some were shipped to Canada; others went to
Australia and New Zealand. Communities were destroyed.
Even the correspondent of The Times, writing of the events of Monday
June 2, 1845, was shocked by the cruelty of the evictions: 'It was the
most wretched spectacle to see these people march out of the Glen in a
body, with two or three carts filled with children, many of them infants.'
To this day, there is a historical distrust of English landowners.
Despite the stunning landscapes, rates of unemployment, suicide and
alcoholism are higher in the Highlands than anywhere in Western
Europe. And some still blame the destruction of their communities on
rich men more interested in animals than people.
Cameron McNish, the Scottish mountaineer and author, is suspicious
not least over the fact that it will cost up to £27,000 a week for
parties of 16 to view the wolves, pricing out 'ordinary' people. He
believes other rich landowners will use the wolf scheme as a precedent
to keep the 'ordinary' British public off their land despite the
right to roam being enshrined in Scottish law.
'It wouldn't be long before other landowners thought up similar
schemes, many of which would be with the purpose of keeping the public
out,' said Mr McNish. 'It would be like the start of the Victorian
sporting estates all over again with the downside that such areas
would be reserved for a few wild animals and the privileged few who
were willing to pay for access.'
Back at Alladale Lodge, Paul Lister disagreed, saying the project will
provide around 300 full-time jobs. 'We will be putting permanent jobs
into this area and showing people that we don't have to live in the past.
'More than 20,000 people will visit, transforming the area. We will
sell tickets for the day. This will be about me putting something back.'
Having recently been granted a licence to keep wild animals on his
estate, one day soon Paul Lister hopes to retire to bed at Alladale
with the howls of grey wolves ringing around the mountains.
Daily Mail: 10th October 2007
