CALL OF THE NEW WILD - The New Wild: Why Invasive Species will be Natures Salvation - page 120

wants to re-create the natural pine forests that once covered most of the area and to populate them with
some of their ancient fauna. His wish list includes elk that disappeared around three thousand years ago,
brown bears not seen for two thousand years, lynx that stuck around until fifteen hundred years ago, and
wolves that survived until just three hundred years ago. But the irony is that to do this requires yet more
intervention. 24
So far, Lister's re-wilding has been slow and doesn't feel so very wild. He has had to put up fences
to protect the million or so saplings he has planted from the large numbers of native red deer that wander
the Highlands—natives left over from the days of the old forests. He briefly imported Swedish elk and
some bison but says, “We couldn't keep them in a serious natural state. They looked good in a TV show
filmed here, but they were a zoo item, and we got rid of them after that.” He has a small enclosure hous-
ing a trio of wildcats. They are fed with rabbit and fish like the mangy tabbies they resemble but, to
his disappointment, refuse to breed. Russian oligarchs come up here to hear the rutting stags bellowing
across the glen. “They bring their own armed security guards,” my taxi driver told me. Fearing assassins
rather than wolves. While walking the peat moor above the glen, I plugged my ears as three Tornado
fighter aircraft shot past us, following the contours of the valley below.
“We are not re-creating the past here,” Lister admitted that evening in the Alladale Lodge, an im-
posing Victorian stone hunting lodge built for an Indian maharaja. “This is a man-made landscape and
will remain so. If we could introduce a couple of packs of wolves and maybe a dozen brown bears, that
would be my dream. I'd die happy.” In truth, he is creating a bizarre hybrid novel ecosystem. That's
fine, but it's not terribly wild.
Most other efforts similarly suggest more novelty than wilderness. The Dutch decided to give nature
the fourteen-thousand-acre Oostvaardersplassen polder that had been reclaimed from the North Sea in
1968. A literal interpretation of re-wilding would see the dikes breached and the land returned to the
sea. But instead the scientist in charge of the government's nature reserves, Frans Vera, decided to try
to re-create a slab of European river delta from before the days of dikes and windmills. He planted bul-
rushes and reed beds as havens for wetland birds like bitterns, spoonbills, marsh harriers, and white-
tailed eagles. More interestingly, he also brought in Heck cattle—the result of a controversial attempt by
German scientist Heinz Heck in the 1930s to breed back extinct wild cattle known as aurochs—and Pol-
ish Konik horses, which some believe to be close relatives of Europe's extinct wild horses. Less sexy,
but arguably more native, are the red deer.
It turned out that most Dutch citizens do not want too much wildness. When the animals started dy-
ing from hunger, there were widespread protests. The scientists defended the deaths, saying that would
be the normal wild way of things. But one animal-rights group sued. The group lost, but now the reserve
sends in people with guns to shoot starving animals, to reduce their suffering. As many as a fifth of the
reserve's animals end their days this way. 25 Again, the boundary between re-wilding and a large game
reserve seems blurred.
A North American version of re-wilding is the return of bison. I went to northern Montana, where
the American Prairie Foundation, a land trust set up by the environment group WWF, is buying cattle
ranches south of the high plains railroad city of Malta and putting in bison. The project is bankrolled by
wealthy environmentalists, including members of the Mars family. It owned 120,000 acres at the time
of my visit and had access to much more public land. This is just part of a wider ambition to return to
the days when seventy million bison roamed the northern Great Plains, and wolves, cougars, grizzlies,
bighorn sheep, elk, and prairie dogs were not uncommon—the re-creation of what National Geographic
calls “an American Serengeti.” 26