Lynx, links and chain links – is this rewilding?

And it seems this fashionable aspect of conservation is sparking a fresh conversation. Even some residents of Henley-on-Thames are fed up with red kites now filling the air above their riverside haven where once these birds were an impressive novelty.

But Shakespeare mentioned the kites’ wayward behaviour in “A Winter’s Tale”, so it’s nothing new and should have been anticipated.

“When the kites build, look to your lesser linen,” declares Autolycus, prompting visions of medieval housewives running into the kitchen panting a line about where the family’s underwear would be found. It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that like many other “nuisance” species the red kite found itself on the verge of extinction in the 20th Century.

Where birds are concerned, it was following the flight path of, among others, the white-tailed sea eagle, which was reintroduced to the Isle of Wight in 2019 a mere 240 years after the species last appeared in English skies. Only that’s not true, despite the romantic notions of rewilders, because an immature white-tailed eagle took up residence on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border for several weeks, if not months, within the last decade. Young eagles wander widely before settling down and haven’t suddenly discovered this behaviour.

One of the fears is that big predators have big impacts. While a kite may steal your pants from the line, some might worry that a white-tailed eagle might grab your pants with you still in them. It’s not feasible but farmers are concerned; agriculture has changed hugely. These largely scavenging birds would easily have found dead livestock left to rot on a hillside 240 years ago but current rules do not allow this. A sickly live lamb or recently dead one makes easy pickings and blaming an eagle has always been easier than admitting poor husbandry.

More worrying for many are the large impact species. A plan to bring lynx to the Kielder Forest on the England/Scotland border saw sheep farmers in the area rightly concerned. The natural quarry of lynx is deer and everyone says there are too many of them. But if a deer leaps a two metre chain link fence to get away next to a convenient field of sheep what’s a hungry lynx to do but take the easy option?

Even the seemingly harmless beaver is under fire, quite literally. There’s a row in Scotland over whether surplus beavers from rewilding should be shot or humanely trapped and moved to another place.

There’s also the issue of creating links between habitats and this affects every attempt to rewild, even if it’s only encouraging plants or insects such as bees and butterflies, something many farmers have been doing for years. Habitats need to form corridors and this can limit projects to build homes, roads, or railways. No scheme can be considered in isolation and there needs to be serious thought given to every aspect.

Farmers, first off here in the south, have already shown through the creation of cluster groups that conservation works better through a wider approach.But suggesting that we can rewild and just import the food we need does not cut the mustard. Since the invention of the U Boat, this island nation has learned you can’t eat food still on a torpedoed ship in mid-Atlantic. So rewilding is perhaps desirable but it will be some time before it is realistically achievable.

Kevin Prince has wide experience of farming and rural business in Hampshire, where he lives near Andover, and across southern England as a director in the Adkin consultancy. His family also run a diversified farm with commercial lets, holiday cottages and 800 arable acres.

Kevin Prince