Large Predators UK comeback!!

Karl Kraft

Well-known member
I had heard a while ago there was some millionare ecologist who wanted to create a huge reserve to reintroduce Wolves, Bears and Wild Boar to the UK (apparently some Wild Boar escaped from a farm into the forest of Dean and have started breeding already!). Just found out the project is actually taking shape. The guy is the heir to the MFI furniture fortune no less, and hes bought 23,000 acres in the highlands and plans to also reintroduce Lynx and Bison (didn't even know Bison were once native!).
Really excited about this.

more here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1368004,00.html
 

luka

Well-known member
me and the boy craner have been waiting a long time for this

what animals would you most like to see introduced to england?

here are some inital suggestions

toucans
armadilloes
bears
wild horses

it'll never happen though, health and saftey regulations
people want to live in a dolls house, or a laboratory or something
zero risk enviroment

thats my new terminolgy

i'll write a thesis

the creation of the zero risk enviroment-britain in the 21st century
 

Karl Kraft

Well-known member
Yeah unfortunately your right. Once one of the 1million or so farmed sheep gets killed etc.... I just cant give up on this one tho, its so RKO classic/ Jurrasic Park/ H Hughes, hopefully more appealing than 3 little pigs, red riding hood and all that other evil propaganda that should have gone the way of the UK wolf long ago. Its had enthusiastic coverage from Guardian to Mail, good for local tourism. I think Lynx at least should make it in, they're very man shy. Boars are already out there (Jurrasic Park Jeff Goldblum chaos theory again!) in the forest of Dean etc...
 

Randy Watson

Well-known member
Zebra on Hadleigh Downs!

I was on holiday on Elba once and the dour hotelier, nonplussed at our excitement having spotted wild boar, asked if we would like to take all theirs. I would as it goes, and for two reasons. Firstly, because no animal trots like a wild boar and secondly, the way their tails stick up vertically as they trot away at speed through long grass makes them look like remote control cars.
 

mms

sometimes
yes!
that sounds great, bears next. and wild cats.
i saw a wild cat in the highlands, it was amazing, a big ferocious thing.

of course you have to be careful not to fuck up the equilibrium. My mate paul works for the evironment agency and oversaw the setting up of the eden project.
amusing that they weren't at all interested in the renewable energy/environmental aspect of the project and it took alot of lobbying and pressure from the envioronment agency to get them into it. now it's a selling point.
he spent alot of time shitting himself about the problem that the stuff growing in the eden project could get out and totally fuck up the surrounding countryside. i think he blocked the idea that they should have had certain insects and birds in the biozones.
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
i always thought it was a shame we didn't still have wolves. beautiful things if you see them up close and they might kill the dirty bastard foxes in east london.
 

luka

Well-known member
dave! the foxes are brilliant! look at the people who hate them! that's reason enough to love them. besides that, they're rogueish, they're the gentlemen theives of the animal world.
 

Karl Kraft

Well-known member
The fox that lives near me goes round very late at night and pisses up all the lamp posts on my street, it knows all those domesticated pussies cant get a look in till sunrise. Must well piss off all the local Staffs, ha.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Wolves, foxes, boar & lynx

I hope they not only get stuck in the reserve but some wolves get reintroduced into what's left of the wild ,
Maybe humans will remember they are animals too and think for a millisecond when they see them before they shoot them , run them over , call the armed guard
Cheers to the wolves ...

From what I rd in August '04 Time mag , over in Spain & Portugal there are fewer than 200 Iberian lynx left
the numbers of big cats (and not so huge lynx) are drawing down , unfortunately not to return
 

mms

sometimes
stelfox said:
i always thought it was a shame we didn't still have wolves. beautiful things if you see them up close and they might kill the dirty bastard foxes in east london.

always thought this was a good arguement that the country folk didn't empathatically use..

how many times have you had foxes do your bins in, and heard em shagging outside the window etc.

personally i love em and it makes me laugh alot but surely this would be the 'hands across the ocean' arguement.
 

Helen

Tumbling Dice
Hopefully biodiverse ecosystems will establish themselves naturally in urban-ish areas whether taxpayers like it or not, albeit in different configurations to natural ecosystems. It seems as though when any given wild/native animal does find a means of existence in a city, it not only survives but thrives; eg. the Herring Gull in parts of the UK, the Brushtail Possum in Melbourne. There are innumerable instances of biodiversity hotspots forming in eg. demilitarized or irradiated zones, places humans can't access... some animal species can get along in irradiated zones as they might have a life span of, say, ten years, where a cancer might not manifest for 30. Long-term their genetic makeup is likely to mutate but not necessarily for the worst. When the Berlin Wall was up the no-go zones around it became populated with hares and henceforth plentiful hunting grounds for rare birds of prey...also the way toxin-processing plants like dock and calendula naturally crop up in garbage dumps.
A glimmer of hope making its way through, that the 'uninhabitable' areas we continue to create become the saving grace of the natural world.
 
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