Wolfing It Up

Last night, Henry and I watched BBC4's Nature's Microworlds: Yellowstone.  They explored why the beaver population increased in the U.S.’s oldest National Park after wolves were reintroduced in 1995.

It was a rather fascinating programme, indeed, fascinating enough that it led me to do some research of my own.

The idea of wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone was first presented to Congress in 1966 by biologists who were concerned about the very high elk population within the park.  Officially, the last wolf within Yellowstone had been killed in 1926, and since then the populations of elk and other large prey animals had soared and has caused a problem for any new growth vegetation.  As the programme we watched said, the ecosystem became unstable because of the removal of key predators, of which the wolf is, so to speak, top dog.

Very soon the deciduous wood species, upland aspen and riparian cottonwood for example, became victims of overgrazing.  Not only vegetation suffered.  Coyotes became more brazen, but they were too small to take on the larger ungulates, and focussed on smaller creatures, such as the red fox, or thieved from others.  So the elk reigned.

Word.

The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone has reportedly increased biodiversity.  Not only did the reduction the elk population allow the increase in new-growth vegetation such as aspen and willow trees, but the vegetation was also able to recover as the elk stopped venturing into areas of low visibility, such as thickets, due to the fear of being attached by wolves.  This has been called 'the ecology of fear' by some clever sounding chaps and is the process of top predators regulating the lower section of the food chain.  The beaver population has recovered due to the restoration of vegetation along riverbanks, and the red fox has also recovered, due to the wolves keeping the coyotes in their place.

Oh sorry, I should have said 'SPOILER ALERT' for that last bit.  It was the answer to the puzzle in BBC4's documentary.  Sorry.

Wolves were once numerous in Scotland.  Early evidence of this exists in the form a 6th century Pictish carving of a wolf discovered at Ardross in Ross and Cromarty.

The wolf was respected as a fellow-hunter in the hunter-gatherer cultures, and revered as a creature of powerful and magical properties.

Not like this though.

However, the change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming during the Neolithic era radically changed the way in which man used the environment.  This in turn drastically changed the relationship between wolves and humans, making wolves a threat to livestock as their habitat was destroyed.  Evidence of this conflict exists from as early as the 2nd century BC.

There are also references to wolves preying on humans, as living in such close quarters may have made these animals lose their fear of people, much as the urban fox has progressed today, making them bolder in a world where the human population was expanding into wolf habitat.  War would have contributed to this as well: as the Orkneyinga Saga and other sources point out, grey wolves could be seen consuming the flesh of the corpses left on medieval battlefields.

This taste for human flesh gave the wolves a tendency to dig up buried corpses, which led to wolf-proof coffins in Atholl being built out of flagstones.  In fact, there used to be a mounted specimen of a wolf on display in the Natural History section of the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery realistically posed in the act of trying to dig up a Bronze Age tomb (it can now be found by itself in their first floor gallery).  Luckily, they still had a picture of it.

Wolves likely became extinct in the Scottish Lowlands during the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries after large tracts of forest were cleared.  James I passed a law in 1427 requiring three wolf hunts a year between 25 April and 1 August, the cubbing season.  Nevertheless, Scottish wolf populations reached a peak during the second half of the sixteenth century, and caused so much damage to cattle in Sutherland that in 1577 James VI made it compulsory, once again, to hunt wolves three times a year.  Official records show that the last Scottish wolf was killed by Sir Ewan Cameron in 1680 in Killiecrankie in Perthshire, although some tales put it as late as 1743, at a place between Fi-Giuthas and Pall-a-chrocain.  There were some rumoured sightings as late as 1888, but anyone who has seen one of Aberdeenshire’s Alsatian-sized uber-foxes will not forget the experience in a hurry; and in the warm hindsight of exaggeration, anything is possible.

So why not reintroduce wolves to Scotland?

But look at what you just said, I hear you cry, there are all the reasons as to why not.

I have a one-species reply for you: Cervus elaphus.

Who me?

Red deer themselves are a contentious component of the Scottish landscape.

In 1999, Dr Martyn Gorman from Aberdeen University called for a reintroduction of wolves to the Scottish Highlands to deal with the then 350,000 red deer damaging young trees.  In 2002, Paul van Vlissingen, a landowner at Letterewe in Ross-shire, proposed the reintroduction of wolves and lynxes, as he felt that the current deer culling methods were inadequate.

According to a 2007 article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, red deer populations in the Highlands are thought to be close to the food-limited maximum, and are widely considered to be impacting upon the environment negatively by over-grazing.  Such high densities of this large herbivore are thought to hamper attempts to reforest, reduce bird densities, and compete with livestock for grazing.  This echoes the elk problem in Yellowstone rather closely.

However, the deer population in Scotland is difficult to manage.  Hunting alone is not working due to the small economic demand for it.  Instead, deer culls are required to manage their numbers, with the Deer Commission for Scotland having a stated management objective of six deer per square kilometre.  However, even when the culling of hinds is accompanied by paid trophy hunting of the stags, the operation barely breaks even.

One solution is to reintroduce the main predator of the red deer into the Highlands – canis lupus.

Yes, you.

 

Simulations suggest that reintroducing wolves is likely to prove a conservation benefit, lowering the deer population to target levels while simultaneously freeing deer estates from the financial burden of the hind cull.  I know this would make our Uncle Scottie up north happy.

Of course, as always, there are some 'buts'.

Even though the 2007 article concluded that wolves could have a great and beneficial influence on deer numbers (in turn helping the natural regeneration of trees and reducing the incidence of Lyme disease), the model it used does not account for the presence of free-ranging sheep over large areas of the Highlands.  Yes, the authors acknowledge the problem, but they argue that the Scottish sheep farming industry is changing rapidly, and on average little or no profit is made directly from sheep by Highland farmers, with approximately 101% of profit accruing instead through subsidies.  If farmers were given additional economic compensation for wolf-killed sheep, their objections might well disappear.  Also, sheep farmers were paid subsidies on a per-sheep basis until 2005, but this has since been replaced by the Single Farm Payment, with the level of subsidy not dependent on numbers of sheep. 

However, free ranging sheep grazing is widely practiced across the Highlands, and losses of sheep to wolves are likely to be higher than in similar projects in Europe, where sheep are grazed in flocks an tended to by shepherds.  Therefore, even though large losses of sheep may not be economically a problem to individual farmers (as mentioned above), there would no doubt be an emotional response that will certainly be blown up to gigantic angst-ridden proportions in the media, stirring up fear of the wolf and uncertainty about its reintroduction.

Another aspect the PRS article does not consider is the economic cost of wolf reintroduction to the taxpayer; a very popular argument against anything these days.  In Yellowstone, there were problems with wolves not always staying in the designated recovery areas.  As the Highlands are smaller than Yellowstone, wolves’ habit of travelling large distances in search of territory and a good mate make it likely that a high level of population management would be needed in the long term.  Any wolf reintroduction would need to be clear as to its cost, and who would pay for it.  Another cost would the aforementioned compensation for sheep killed by wolves – although borrowing the concept of the Defenders of Wildlife, set up when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, a private compensation fund could help resolve this issue and improve relations between pro- and anti-wolf campaigners.

However, all these issues can be figured out with careful planning and long foresight, with a clear vision of what the long-term benefits and detriments reintroducing the wolf to Scotland could be, including any tourist revenue that may support the cost of wolf management, and what to do if wolves stray beyond their allocated boundaries.

The problem with doing that is you.

Who us?

You think deer are cute.

I shall refer to the Tullos Hill deer cull in Aberdeen which hit several headlines, local and national, last year when the Aberdeen City Council said a cull was vital to protect about 80,000 new trees being planted.

Three Aberdeen community councils asked the planned deer cull to be abandoned, saying that the new-tree scheme was not reason enough to kill deer who had been living on Tullos Hill for generations.  They accused the Council, in a strongly-word letter no less, of underhand tactics to get the backing for the city's 'tree for every citizen' initiative, and that the limited public consultation was flawed and made no mention of a deer cull.  Their local community opinion on the matter, they said, had been dismissed.  The deer were described as a valuable resource.

The Council responded that the consultation for phase two of the 'tree for every citizen' scheme included input from the community councils and community groups, all of which were largely in favour of the tree-planting programme.  They went on to state that the roe deer population on Tullos Hill was much higher than the land could support, with very little variety of vegetation growing, and even the deer themselves suffering as a result.

Campaigner Jeanette Wiseman said 'We hope that the housing and environment committee will stop this needless slaughter.'  It was, according to the SSPCA's Mike Flynn, 'absurd and abhorrent to undertake a cull because it would be too costly to protect trees…we would suggest these trees should either be planted elsewhere or not at all.  Trees should certainly not be planted at the expense of the lives of animals.'

One lonely hand is raised at the back and someone mentions, as the Council did, that the deer on Tullos Hill are at much higher density than the land can support and deer are starting to suffer as a result.  And certainly, given time the trees will take hold and flourish (don't give it just a few months, like one campaigner did, and declare it a failure – trees take time to grow).

Beyond you thinking deer are cute, you are also frightened of wolves.

See?  Cute as a deer.

Whilst I won't deny that this is a silly notion, I would argue that we probably should have a predator we're scared of.  Ray Mears, in an argument against the reintroduction of wolves, says ‘you have to think how you are going to control it because it is going to do its thing.  Often what happens in these situations you are going to have an animal that people then resent.  I don't think we should condemn an animal because it is living to its nature.'

And even though there were rumours of wolves preying on humans, especially corpses and buried bodies, there is no authentic account of a healthy wolf, either in captivity or the wild, attacking human beings.  The key thing is not to feed them.  Foxes – whom you find almost as cute as deer – are being fed to encourage them to come closer for a photograph.  They are wild animals.  They bite and steal your babies.  Wolves bite harder and steal your teenagers.  Henry and I have been huge fans of the wolf since a brief posting to Alberta back in the day, but we're not about to put out saucers of milk for them.  If I saw one coming closer to steal my baby, I would beat it down or die trying.

Reintroduce whatever you like.  Beavers, boar, lynxes and wolves.  Save the trees, birds and biodiversity.  Bring it on.  I've been watching The Grey and fortifying the place.

It'll be more interesting than Survivor anyhow.