Our Wild Things columnist Eric Brown spotlights a new book identifying the vital species ripe for reintroduction in Britain and explaining exactly why we should all welcome them back.
Every so often nature produces new buzzwords like eggs hatching beneath expectant bird mothers. Examples such as conservation ecology and biodiversity would have been relatively unknown until recent decades. Now the new nature buzzword is rewilding.
Isabella Tree's groundbreaking 2018 book Wilding spawned a flood of follow-up publications intent on examining and developing her pioneering ideas.
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Isabella's best-selling opus described the gamble taken when she and husband Charlie Burrell controversially allowed their ailing Sussex farm to go wild. Birds and animals flourished as the land returned close to its natural state. Scarce birds such as nightingales, turtle doves and white storks flourished along with the purple emperor butterfly as specially introduced animals like pigs and horses returned the land to how it might have been hundreds of years ago.
Now author Benedict Macdonald goes a step further by exploring which animals extinct to Britain may be reintroduced successfully in a future where rewilding is widely accepted. Macdonald had an earlier stab at this in his previous book Rebirding, which won a prize for global conservation writing.
His latest offering, Cornerstones, explains why there is further scope for newly-returned species beavers and boar. He identifies other key, or cornerstone, species like lynx, wolves, bees, whales, cattle and horses which he believes are wild forces capable of changing our world.
The UK is already one of the world's most wildlife-impoverished nations and natural history filmmaker Macdonald strongly backs moves to bring back animals lost to our countryside.
He makes a strong case for wolves to be reintroduced but admits their predatory instincts may be too sharp for immediate human acceptance which allowed their return in France.
The same applies to lions, while elephants no longer have the space to exist here, mainly because of our burgeoning human population.
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Lynx, though, could be a different matter according to Macdonald. He believes these wild cats could be back in our landscape within a decade if people focus on the advantages of such a move. The UK is overrun with deer because humans eliminated all their predators. Deer browsing ruins young trees on which certain birds and insects rely and which can avert flooding. This leads to denuding of large areas such as those in Scotland which should be forested. Lynx prey on deer and could help restore the natural balance.
Macdonald's other theories are thoughtfully outlined and convincingly argued. Maybe he has added another buzzword to nature vocabulary by drawing attention to cornerstones.
Cornerstones by Benedict Macdonald is published by Bloomsbury price £17.99
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