For my 50th column I thought I’d turn back the clock way beyond September 2018 when it first appeared here. Imagine you own a time machine capable of going back to when Britain’s population teemed with animals and birds.
Press the start button, sit back and wait for the dial to register the fifth century AD before pressing stop. Your quarry is an animal native to Britain for 10,000 years with remains found in Yorkshire indicating the Northern Lynx survived here into the sixth century. Lynxes were around in Britain after the Romans and until the Saxons arrived. Deforestation and escalating agriculture is believed to have caused their extinction. You spot one fairly quickly, return to the machine and set the dial for a Bronze Age meeting with Aurochs, huge bovid forerunners of our familiar cows. They will be extinct globally by AD 1627 and you may drop in on the Late Pleistocene period to see descendants called Wisent.
Picture by Donna Zimmer
If I could turn back time I'd visit periods when Beavers, Wolves, Lions and Bears were widespread in Britain before parking my machine, and reading a book which discusses Britain’s “lost” mammals.
Wild Things: Tracking down the Emperor
Ross Barnett’s The Missing Lynx traces where many of these extinct animals were last found, explains why they died out and predicts many could return.
Lynxes and Wolves can already be seen in large pens in Scotland and Kent while Bison, extinct in the wild in Europe since 1927 and thought to be related to Aurochs and Wisent, will soon be introduced to a fenced enclosure in Blean Woods, Kent. All are candidates for a licenced return to the wild.
Picture by Donna Zimmer
Barnett says opinion is split on Beavers who reappeared mysteriously in Devon and Cornwall. Farmers dislike their habit of felling trees to create lodges and pools while conservationists insist this can stop rivers flooding and is beneficial for insects and birds.
Wild Things: Unearthing the secrets of the Purple Emperor
Lynxes and Wolves released into the wild may save landowners small fortunes by preying on excess deer they pay to have culled. Just don’t expect to see Lions back in British countryside any time soon.
The Missing Lynx by Ross Barnett is published by Bloomsbury, Price £10.99 paperback.
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