The Hushings - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 184

subsidy regime, farmers on the European continent (though not in
Britain, where no major shift is expected) will vacate around 30 mil-
lion hectares of land, an area roughly the size of Poland. 16 This is not
the result of any policy or plan; in fact, some European governments
are trying very hard to stop it from happening and to keep farmers on
the land. But as young people leave to find jobs and adventure else-
where and no one is prepared to take their place, the decline of
farming in many parts becomes inevitable.
There is a sadness here, which I felt while walking in the Ardèche in
southern France, and finding, like Mayan ruins in the jungle, exqui-
sitely built stone terraces, flagged paths, ancient bridges and stone
stairways now overwhelmed by chestnut forests - growing sometimes
from the very walls - through which sounders of boar marauded and
pine martens leapt. My delight in the resurgent wildlife was tempered
by the shock of seeing that work, laid down hand upon hand by
untold generations, whose people - like Dafydd and his roof - had
built a future for descendants they would never meet, gone all to
waste. A civilization had been erased.
The process of retreat, with its mingled griefs and joys, appears in
many places, particularly the uplands of Europe, to be inexorable.
Unless farmers and their children are to be forced to remain on the
land, there is no option but to acknowledge it and then to decide what
happens next. The areas farmers will vacate might be large enough, if
the people of this continent so choose, to permit the reintroduction
not just of the wolves, bears, lynx and bison which are gradually
regaining their footing on the land, but also of elephants, rhinos, hip-
popotamuses, lions and hyenas.
Does that sound ridiculous? I am sure it does. It is fair to say that
the people of Europe are not yet ready for it. But if there is sufficient
land, if that land is concentrated in large enough blocks and protected
from further exploitation, there are likely to be few biological impedi-
ments. All these animals (or those of related species) ranged across
Europe until recently, and our native fauna and flora have evolved to
survive their attentions. The barriers, of course, would be political
and cultural. But as the remarkable change in attitudes towards the
wolf in many parts of Europe demonstrates, this might not always be
so. Perhaps one day big cats will no longer need to be imagined.