A Work of Hope - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 128

Name of
species

Approximate date of
extinction in Britain

Suitability for
reintroduction

Reintroduction efforts
so far

Elephant The straight- tusked

elephant was driven
out of Britain by the
last glaciation,
around 115,000 years
ago. It was hunted to
extinction elsewhere
in Europe around
40,000 years ago. 16
(Another species of
elephant, the woolly
mammoth, was
present in Britain
until 12,000 years
ago, but that had an
entirely different
ecology.)

2 The straight- tusked

elephant was closely
related to the Asian
elephant, which might be
a good proxy. I have seen
no discussion about the
reintroduction of
elephants to Europe,
though I would like to
start one.

Black
rhinoceros

It never lived here,
but two similar
species did, the last of
which became extinct
around 115,000 years
ago. The woolly rhino
lived here until
around 22,000 years
ago, and in Germany
until 12,500 years
ago. 17

2 The Merck's and

narrow- nosed rhinos,
which lived in Britain,
appear to have been
browsing species: they
would have eaten trees
and shrubs as well as
grass. That would make
the black rhinoceros a
more suitable proxy
than the white
rhinoceros (whose
feeding habit more
closely resembles the
woolly rhino's, which
grazed on grassy steppes
during the Ice Age).