A Work of Hope - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 135

Name of
species

Approximate date of
extinction in Britain

Suitability for
reintroduction

Reintroduction efforts
so far

Dalmatian
pelican

Remains have been
found from the
Bronze Age in the
Cambridgeshire Fens
and from the Iron
Age in the Somerset
Levels, close to
Glastonbury. A single
medieval bone has
been found in the
same place. 44

10 None. The pelican's

range, which once
covered much of Europe,
has steadily shrunk. It is
sensitive to disturbance,
and its habitat has been
reduced by drainage.
Two thousand years ago,
Pliny recorded that it
was still breeding on the
Rhine, Scheldt and Elbe
rivers. 45 Today the
nearest breeding colonies
are on the Danube and
in Montenegro. This
means that pelicans are
unlikely to recolonize
Britain naturally: they
would have to be
introduced.

This list is offered as a catalogue of plausibility. The highest scores rep-
resent the reintroductions that might be tried first, on the grounds that
they are most likely to succeed, to be politically acceptable and to help
restore dynamic processes in the rewilding lands or seas of this country
in the current (and warming) climate. Polar bears need not apply.
Once such species have been established at genetically viable popu-
lation sizes and protected from man-made hazards, they should, more
or less, be left to get on with it. If they cannot survive here, that answers
the question of whether or not the reintroduction was appropriate.
Broadly speaking, I have marked down the Ice Age and Preboreal
species - those adapted to the open tundra or steppes, the habitats
available during and soon after the great freeze. If an animal died out