Reintroducing vanished animals into the wild: the UK example

The rodent to ruin?
Finlo Rohrer, BBC News 29 Jan 08;

Plans are afoot to reintroduce beavers, wildcats and wolves to habitats in Britain from which they have long disappeared. But is it right to offer a helpful human hand or is this immoral manmade meddling?

Picture a forest. A Scottish crossbill rummages for conifer cones, a capercaillie fans its tail, a red deer skulks in the shadows, while a beaver gnaws thoughtfully on a tree.

It could be a classic picture of wildlife in Scotland, but for one thing. No beavers. Hunted for their pelts, there have been no wild beavers in the UK since at least the 16th Century.

Now two groups in Scotland plan to remedy that. The Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland have submitted an application to the Scottish minister for the environment to bring back beavers in a small-scale experiment which could lead to a wider reintroduction.

Such "reintroductions" are now a common tactic in the global conservation movement, with plans in the UK to reintroduce wildcats and bring wolves back to Scotland.

The measures are aimed at restoring habitats and providing a more natural path to conservation. Wouldn't it be better to control the deer population in Scotland with wolves, rather than rely on man-made methods, the proponents suggest.

Poetic return

But reintroductions are not without controversy. In mainland Europe, the reintroduction of bears and wolves has met with hostility from farmers worried about livestock being killed.

And there is a key question. Should man attempt to manipulate habitats and eco-systems, even if only to repair the damage done by man in the past?

There is a certain poetry in the return of some animals, something compellingly romantic about a wolf staring cold-eyed out of a snowy forest. And the beaver has its own appeal.

The Scottish Wildlife Trust talks of a "charismatic creature", citing a study which estimates that beaver-tourism could be worth £101 per household.

Regarded as a "keystone" species, beavers will help renew and create wetland which will help "frogs, toads, water voles, dragonflies, birds and fish".

But in Estonia, the return of the beaver has caused problems.

"Beavers have caused floods in forests, which means the forest may perish because of the excessive damp," says Kaarel Roht, senior specialist in the forest department at the Ministry of the Environment.

"Beavers can also close drainage canals with dams to get the food, flooding big areas of land and hindering agriculture."

Culling question

And the solution to this? In 2006, 7,368 beavers were killed in Estonia.

This raises a serious question. Is it acceptable to reintroduce a species which then has to be controlled with culling?

Professor Andrew Linzey, director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, says no.



"It can't be ethical to introduce a species which one is then going to kill. Many people who want to reintroduce species don't seem to have an understanding that ecology is an evolving process.

"To reintroduce a species after hundreds of years is to profoundly disturb that ecology. There is no pristine state we can move back to."

But this ethical position is diametrically opposed to that of the conservation fraternity.

Craig Hilton-Taylor, manager of the Red List Unit at the World Conservation Union (IUCN), says culling is sometimes necessary.

Last resort

In Africa, after years of conservation work, including animals being moved to new areas, the elephant population has risen in many countries to the point where culling is seen as necessary by the authorities.

"You want to keep the balance in the system. You have to allow culling... but the thing for us is that it is humane," says Dr Hilton-Taylor.

Accepting culling as a last resort, conservationists focus their efforts on making sure reintroductions are sufficiently well-evaluated that episodes of dramatic overpopulation and animals failing to thrive in areas are kept to a minimum.

"There are lots of reintroductions happening without them being well thought through. Huge amounts of money gets spent on these things," says Dr Hilton-Taylor

"In the case of gharial [Indian crocodile-like reptiles], 10,000 animals had been put back into the wild but the success rate has been appalling, losing them so rapidly."

If beavers should be re-introduced across Scotland or indeed across the whole of the UK, no-one can guarantee that in 20 years they will not have thrived to the point of needing to be culled.

And how the British public will react to the prospect of cute beavers being killed is anybody's guess.

The Confederation of Forest Industries is, needless to say, worried about the prospect of beavers returning, and it questions exactly how "native" beavers can be regarded as in its submission to the beaver consultation exercise.

Profound disturbance

"Due to the interval since beavers were extant in GB (around 400 years) the proposal is in reality one of an introduction of an alien species, and that into a completely different, man-made environment compared to that which existed all those centuries ago."

It is a sentiment that Prof Linzey agrees with.

"It is a big mistake to treat it as though it was a page with holes that have to be filled because they were once filled.

"An act of introduction is an act of profound disturbance. It needs to be looked at very carefully indeed."

The plans to reintroduce wolves in Scotland could be timed to coincide with the return of beavers, in the hope they would help manage the population. But no-one can say that the wolf and beaver will thrive to the same degree.

And exactly how one chooses to interfere with habitats is a complicated business.

The Aspinall Foundation is working on a plan to reintroduce the native "wildcat" or reinforce a current population, using captive animals. It is said there are still wildcats in Scotland.

But before an application is made, there must be a study of the DNA of the captive animals. If they prove not to be a separate species from the domestic cat, the reintroduction plan will go no further.

If they are demonstrated to be separate it will provide another battleground for the proponents of species reintroductions and those who favour a different approach.

The Big Question: Should animals that have died out in Britain be reintroduced into the wild?
Sophie Morris, The Independent 1 Feb 08;

Why are we asking this now?

Environmentalists hope beavers will soon be reintroduced to Scotland, subject to approval by the Scottish Executive. If the trial reintroduction gets the go-ahead three families of European beavers, about 15 to 20 animals, will be brought over from Norway and released into the Knapdale Forest in Mid-Argyll in the spring of 2009. Beavers were hunted to extinction in Scotland in the 16th century for their furs and a secretion, which provided one of the active ingredients in aspirin. Mammals have never been reintroduced into wild in the UK before, though four German beavers were released at a Lancashire nature reserve.

What exactly is reintroduction?

The deliberate release of animals into the wild, usually of species that are either endangered or extinct in a particular eco-system, but have survived elsewhere in the wild. Biologists only realised fairly recently, in the 1980s, that successful reintroduction from captivity needed extremely careful planning, given the skills mammals and birds need to learn in order to survive in the wild.

Why do we want to re-establish beavers?

Despite their absence from Scotland for the past 400 years, beavers are of huge ecological importance to the area and without them there is a gaping hole in the ecosystem. Their ability to create wetland habitat helps other species such as otters, who hunt in the ponds beavers create through building dams; water shrews and water voles, who share their burrows; and even birds, who can feed and nest in the dead wood beavers use in the dams. Damming itself improves river systems by reducing pollutants flowing through the water. Allan Bantick, chairman of the Beaver Trial Steering Group, calls them a "keystone species". A functioning ecosystem," says Bantick, "does not function as well as it might if it doesn't have all the components in place. The beaver has been missing for 400 years too long."

Why do some people oppose it?

An earlier proposal from Scottish National Heritage was turned down in 2005 and Robin Malcolm, the owner of the nearby Duntrune Castle Estate in Kilmartin, among other local residents, has called the present joint bid from the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society "completely irresponsible". Rather than benefiting the local ecosystems, claims Malcolm, the beavers could inflict damage on trees and rivers. A widespread concern is the effect beavers will have on salmon populations. It is a common misconception that they eat fish, when beavers are in fact entirely herbivorous, but fisheries worry their dam building will impede salmon migration. In Norway, where beaver numbers have increased from 100 to 50,000, there has been no detrimental impact on salmon numbers.

Has reintroduction worked elsewhere?

Norway is the best example, but Britain is way behind all of its continental neighbours on reintroducing beavers, because of the bureaucratic quagmire which has slowed down the various proposals in Scotland. Twenty-four European countries have already successfully reinstated the species in their natural habitat. The current proposal is only for a "trial reintroduction", to identify any problems. If they do become a problem, says Bantick: "We've got a good and established hunting culture established in Scotland. This is just another animal that could be assimilated into that regime. That's the way it's treated in pretty much all other European countries."

Have other species been reintroduced?

As yet, no major mammals have ever been reintroduced into the UK, but there have been various successful bird programmes. The white-tailed sea eagle was returned to the Isle of Rum off the western coast of Scotland in 1975 and is now a major tourist attraction, attracting an estimated £2.5m to the Isle of Mull alone annually. reintroductions of the elegant red kite have been successful in various parts of the UK, particularly in the Chilterns. Black grouse numbers are currently rising in the Peak District.

What about in other parts of the world?

The reintroduction of all sorts of species is something of a trend at the moment, though interest tends to focus on the larger and more lovable creatures, or those most in danger of extinction. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) established a specialist group for the reintroduction of endangered species in 1988 which sets up and oversees such programmes all over the world.

Lynx have been successfully transported from Canada to the mountains of Colorado recently, where they had been all but wiped out by trappers. It proved difficult to establish the new lynx community in the United States but after five years there were roughly 40 new animals. If they are still doing well in another 10 years, they will be considered there to stay. Grey wolves have been successfully reintroduced into America's Yellowstone park.

Which species need reintroduction?

Six of the world's eight species of bear are considered "under threat" by the IUCN and high on their list of priorities. The giant panda is an endangered species and only 1 to 2,000 remain in China. Some reintroduction projects are under way, but suffer from a lack of suitable release sites. There have been a number of attempts to reintroduce rhino into the wild in India and parts of Africa, though this is a very fragile process involving tiny numbers.

The Dian Fossey Gorilla Foundation closely monitors groups of mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and has attempted several reintroductions, with little success. The snow leopard, native to central and southern Asia, is an endangered species, the most at risk of all the big cats and desperately needs a successful reintroduction scheme in the Himalayas.

So is British wildlife set to change?

It was reported last year that British wildlife experts were asking US colleagues for advice on reintroducing wolves to Scotland. The Wolf Conservation Society is worried Britain is now too crowded for such a scheme to succeed. There have been significant attempts to reintroduce the brown bear to western Europe in recent years, but it is unlikely to be approved here given the bad press the species has received recently: a reintroduction scheme in the Alps ended badly when "Bruno" began misbehaving in Bavaria and was shot in the summer of 2006.

Should we consider wider re-introduction schemes across the UK?

Yes...

* Any species which once existed in the UK and was hunted to extinction is a valuable part of the country's biodiversity

* Re-establishing often distinctive species in an area can be a great boon to the local economy through increased tourism

* It is important, for both scientific and education purposes, that we are able to study animals in their natural habitat in the wild

No...

* Britain is far too overcrowded for the introduction of dangerous mammals such as wolves to be considered

* Our ecosystems have survived for hundreds of years since bears and beavers became extinct here. There's no call to bring them back

* Much of the land in the UK is privately owned. It is unfair to expect individuals to deal with the consequences of any such programmes