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and wonder to those who appreciate them, which is surely all that is
required to make something worthy of preservation. Even so, it
compounds the confusion - seldom acknowledged, let alone resolved -
between conservation and gardening.
Some animal species might also have been mistakenly seen as native.
The eminent mammal biologist Derek Yalden presents compelling
evidence that the brown hare was brought here by people. 72 The bones
of what appear to have been mountain hares (a different species) are
found in England and Wales in deposits from the early Mesolithic,
soon after the ice sheets retreated. They appear to have been driven
out (perhaps surviving in Scotland) as the land became forested. Pos-
sible records of brown hares begin to appear in the Bronze Age; more
certain remains in the Iron Age. In Commentarii de Bello Gallico ,
Julius Caesar records that the Britons considered hares, fowl and
geese 'unlawful to eat, but rear them for pleasure and amusement'. 73
This raises the possibility that brown hares were brought to Britain
either as pets or to be hunted for sport.
Restoring a functioning ecosystem does not equate to purging all
non-native species. It requires only that we control or suppress those
species which deprive many others of a foothold here. Even some of the
most prolific exotic animals could be subdued by native predators. Grey
squirrels, for example, are currently storming through the ecosystem,
defying attempts by humans to restrain them. Ecologists hate them, with
good reason. But pine martens and goshawks love them 74 (in the purely
carnal sense). Had landowners not waged war on all predators, regard-
less of their impacts, they might not have had to wage - and lose - the
current war against grey squirrels. Martens and goshawks, now return-
ing to some of the places from which they were exterminated, may have
the potential to reduce the grey squirrel to such an extent that it begins
to function ecologically much as a native species would.
Where rivers contain healthy populations of predatory fish, they
appear to thrive on invasive crayfish. Sometimes when I have caught a
fat perch for my dinner, I have found a crayfish or two in its stomach.
Perhaps because of the acidity of the fish's stomach, the shell dissolves
before the flesh does: I have extracted from the insides of a perch per-
fectly peeled crayfish tails, which look as if they have just been shovelled
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