Précis

Creatures great and small are returning to the wilder reaches of Europe, centuries after they were hunted to extinction or driven from their natural homes.
Some are brought back by human hand; others make their own way back as original habitats are restored.

It’s known as re-wilding, a push-back by scientists and conservationists against a creeping loss of biodiversity.

“It’ll be like the dodo, it’ll be gone,” warns scientist and wildlife warrior Dr Paul O’Donoghue, whose mission is to rescue the critically endangered Scottish wildcat.

Reporter Barbara Miller joins Dr O’Donoghue on a search for the wildcat – so elusive it’s called the “ghost cat” – in the dramatic scenery of the Scottish highlands. Thousands once thrived in the UK. Now there are about 50, a population smashed by past hunting and interbreeding with feral cats.

“This is our secret weapon,” says Dr O’Donoghue, as he sets baits of stinking, oily, tinned mackerel to lure wildcats to his camera traps. His dream is to create a vast reserve starting with at least 250 wildcats.

Most locals back his wildcat aspiration, but his next project – taking bigger, fiercer lynx from the wild in Romania and freeing them in England’s north - is hitting opposition.

It was 1300 years ago - around when the Vikings first invaded Britain – that lynx last lived there. But Dr O’Donoghue insists that the transplanted lynx will adapt quickly, while keeping fox and deer numbers down in “an ecology of fear”, and have minimal impact on farmers.

But for O’Donoghue’s local adversary, sheep farmer Greg Dalton, there’s no going back. “No one is going to be putting up with sheep being eaten by a lynx,” he says. “They will get to a point where they will sell up and move away and the land will be left for the mess of re-wilding - god knows what it will end up looking like.”

Farmer Dalton calls the re-wilding push “slightly delusional”. Surprisingly it’s a sentiment shared by re-wilder O’Donoghue about the most ambitious re-wilding plan afoot – bringing elephants to Denmark.

“I think that’s a ridiculous idea,” says O’Donoghue, arguing that it will bring re-wilding into disrepute. Yet proponents include respected scientists who note that elephants were in Europe for millions of years before disappearing relatively recently, about 12,000 years ago.

To these re-wilders, Europe is an ark for threatened elephants in Asia and Africa – and there’s a moral imperative to act.

“We’re really seeing massive losses of biodiversity at the moment and it we look to the future we see dark skies,” says Danish ecology professor Jens-Christian Svenning. “It’s an obligation for scientists to work on helping us to overcome this.”

If Professor Svenning is right, we could see elephant herds grazing the wilds of Denmark within a decade.

Further information
For more information on the re-wilding project and how you can help, see:
Wildcat Haven
Trees for Life - Rewilding

Panoramas/Aerials landscapes, animals

Music

00:00

BARBARA MILLER: Across Europe a revolution is taking place. Wild animals are returning, some of them not seen in these parts for centuries.

00:08

It’s a phenomenon called “re-wilding”.

00:29

To understand more about this controversial and growing movement

00:40

Miller driving/On ferry

I’ve come back home to Scotland. The journey takes me to the western highlands, sparsely populated, wild, remote and beautiful territory. We’re on the trail of an ancient and hardy highland cat, who has survived in Scotland’s farthest flung nooks and crannies for thousands of years, but whose luck is now running out.

00:47

TITLE: WILD THINGS

01:08

Miller to camera on beach. Castle in b/g. Super:
Reporter BARBARA MILLER

“This remote peninsula, Ardnamurchan, is at the heart of efforts to save the Scottish wildcat. It’s an elusive beast, not dissimilar to the untrained eye to your regular Tabby, but here in this whole area there are only thought to be eight or nine of them and that’s out of about fifty in the whole country.

01:12

Aerial of castle/forest

Music

01:33

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “There would have been, you know, potentially tens of thousands in the UK

01:41

O’Donoghue interview

and now we’re down to fifty and our dream is to create a 7,000 sq mile wildcat haven with up to 250 wildcats in, as a starting point”.

01:44

O’Donoghue in forest

BARBARA MILLER: The fight to save the wildcat has been taken up by Paul O’Donoghue, scientist, farmer, Oxford University alumnus and uncompromising wildlife warrior.

01:54

O’Donoghue interview. Super:
Dr. PAUL O’DONOGHUE

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “It’s a magnificent, it’s a beautiful creature. It’s perfectly adapted to its highland home. It’s tough, it’s a survivor. It’s adaptable and against all odds, it’s actually handing on and it just needs a helping hand to get over the line and survive into the future”.

02:07

BARBARA MILLER: “Of all the animals then you could choose, why the Scottish wildcat?”

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Because the Scottish wildcat to me is, it’s one, if not the rarest animal on the planet and time’s running out and we are the only people who can save it”.

02:23

Wildcats in forest/loch

BARBARA MILLER: It’s sometimes called the ghost cat, a mysterious solitary and mainly nocturnal beast that lurks somewhere in this highland landscape.

02:34

Photo. Hunter with dead wildcat

Years ago it was a trophy for hunters. These days the wildcat is a protected species.

“It’s essentially a big

02:48

Miller and O’Donoghue near loch

Tabby right?”

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “The Scottish wildcat certainly isn’t a big Tabby.

02:56

O’Donoghue interview

Scottish wildcats and feral cats behave very differently. You’ll find feral cat colonies where you can get 20 to 30 cats, the wildcat you will never see that. They live solitary lives with overlapping territories and in that way they live in harmony with the ecosystem. They don’t overpopulate, they don’t produce a big burden on the prey species that feral cats do. They live in colonies, disease is common.

03:00

Wildcats will only breed once a year, because the conditions are so harsh. They’ve evolved to live in this beautiful wild place,

03:22

the social system and behaviour is adapted to the Scottish highlands”.

03:29

Highlands hills

BARBARA MILLER: Part of Paul O’Donoghue’s work is to try to get a handle on exactly how many cats that are left in the wild. For that he needs the support of local land owners –

03:33

Ewen Maclean standing by river

Laird Ewen MacLean of Ardgour has been won over to the cause.

03:45

Ewen driving with Miller on estate

03:52

LAIRD EWEN MACLEAN: “The Macleans of Ardgour have been here for around 600 years, they came up from the Isle of Mull and the land was taken by force and we’ve been here ever since”.

03:55

BARBARA MILLER: We’re on the Laird’s Ardgour estate, 12,000 hectares of forests and mountains.

04:05

“Do you know it all?”

LAIRD EWEN MACLEAN: “Yes I know it very well,

04:11

Super:
Laird EWEN MACLEAN
Landowner

yes I’ve walked it many times, you know, during the summer hiking trips and in the winter as well, with snow on the ground it’s quite beautiful”.

04:16

BARBARA MILLER: “Have you ever seen a wildcat on this estate?”

04:26

LAIRD EWEN MACLEAN: “I have never actually seen a wildcat on this estate, no”.

04:29

BARBARA MILLER: “Why should we save the wildcat? I mean we don’t even see it, why should we bother?”

LAIRD EWEN MACLEAN: “Well that’s a fairly poor reflection on humanity if we can’t save an animal, just because we can’t see it every day… I would say”.

04:32

Miller and Maclean out of car with dog. They walk

BARBARA MILLER: “So basically you’ve said to the wildcat people that they can look for wildcats anywhere on your estate”.

LAIRD EWEN MACLEAN: “Yeah, yeah I’ve given them, you know, permission to set

04:45

camera traps at locations where they suspect there will be wildcats and hopefully when we see the footage there will be some actual cats on the tape”.

05:02

BARBARA MILLER: “What does it feel like to be a landowner of this huge and beautiful piece of land?”

LAIRD EWEN MACLEAN: “Well we don’t think of ourselves as landowners, we think of ourselves as

05:12

Aerial of estate landscape

guardians for the next generation”.

BARBARA MILLER: “How do you think the old Laird’s of several centuries ago would feel about you now trying to preserve this cat?”

LAIRD EWEN MACLEAN: “We’d hope that they would be very proud that we are doing our bit. They’re obviously very much a part of the folklore”.

05:25

O’Donoghue walking near stream setting camera

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Okay so this is a very good tree to attach a camera on.

05:43

If you kind of look through here, you can see a game trail, animals come through here and there’s a good chance that this trail is also used by a cat. They’re very efficient and they use easy access routes through thick vegetation. We’ll put this camera trap up here and we’ll see what we get”.

05:47

BARBARA MILLER: Paul O’Donoghue has been laying camera traps like this one all over the Laird’s estate.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Yeah it’s a motion sensor so anything that walks past, we’ll get a mug shot of it right here”.

06:02

BARBARA MILLER: And he has a few tricks in his arsenal to attract the wildcat.

06:12

O’Donoghue with can of mackerel

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: [holding a can] “This is our secret weapon”.

BARBARA MILLER: “Sardines?”

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Mackerel fillets in oil. A quick smell will tell you why”.

BARBARA MILLER: “Oh my goodness”.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “There you go - and because it’s in the oil, when the rain, and it rains a lot here, it doesn’t wash away the scent so this will last for a long time. It’s our best bet and the wildcats they come in from miles for this.

06:16

Yeah. Shall we put some down here and see what happens?”

BARBARA MILLER: “Yep”.

06:37

Estate GVs

Music

06:40

Hall on estate/Brennan looking at footage. Animals captured by camera

BARBARA MILLER: Paul’s assistant, Ewan Brennan, has been trolling through hours and hours of camera trap footage. It seems it’s not just the cats who go wild for tinned mackerel. The cameras capture all manner of local night life.

06:47

Night footage. Pine marten

This little guy is a pine marten, one of the more attractive members of the weasel family.

07:07

Night footage. Badger

And here another member of the same family, the badger.

07:12

Brennan and O’Donoghue looing at footage in hall

But it’s the elusive wildcat they’re after.

07:19

Wildcat footage

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: [finding wildcat on footage] “Wow. Absolutely unbelievable man! Where was this then? Where’d you get this?”

EWAN BRENNAN: “This was in the same place as we found the one from the previous year”.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Look at this… let me see it. It’s like a proper tiger, like a little tiger”.

07:25

BARBARA MILLER: If you devote your life to trying to save the creature, you celebrate its every point of difference with the domestic cat, even though to the rest of us, there doesn’t seem much between them.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “They’re really, really good.

07:38

Brennan and O’Donoghue looing at footage

Look at the stripes on that. It’s got that kind of big cat swagger hasn’t it? Tail’s flicking like a… what target this boy’s going to start on. There’s no doubt about it that is a proper, that’s the real deal man. That is the real deal”.

EWAN BRENNAN: “A hundred per cent”.

07:49

Wildcat in forest

BARBARA MILLER: Today hybridisation is the biggest threat to the wildcat.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “So if you’re a tom wildcat walking through the forests

08:03

O’Donoghue interview

of the highlands, you’re more likely to come across 10, 20, 30 feral cat females before you meet a pure wildcat. So the chances of you breeding coming across another pure wildcat is less… it’s almost zero - which is why we’re in the desperate situation that we find ourselves in”.

08:12

BARBARA MILLER: “What are the prospects for the wildcat? How long as it got?”

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “It’s imminent extinction. It’s probably … with the numbers so low, three to five years. That’s it. There’ll be no, this’ll be an academic argument, it’ll be like the dodo, it’ll be gone”.

08:29

Miller and O’Donoghue visit cat owner

BARBARA MILLER: [arriving at farm] “So was he quite happy about this?”

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Yeah, he seemed to be. Yes”.

BARBARA MILLER: The thinking is that the only way to save it is by carrying out a mass neutering program.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Hi. Paul O’Donoghue from Wildcat Haven”.

HUGH: “Yes, hi”.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Thank you. Do you mind if we come in and see your cat?”

08:44

Cat in cat box

HUGH: “Of course, yes he’s just here. That’s Chico. He’s looking a bit sorry for himself”.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Looking a bit nervous but we’ll take very, very good care of him. The way it will work then Hugh,

09:03

O’Donoghue explains program to Hugh

we’ll neuter him, we’ll microchip him and give him a really good health check and he’ll come back to you this afternoon spick and span and ready to settle back into life, life here”.

HUGH: “Yeah that’s perfect”.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “And it means then crucially that he can’t go and mate with any of the female wildcats in the area because within a mile of here, there are really amazing wildcats and this is the only way to protect them”.

HUGH: “Yes it’s good to know”.

09:13

O’Donoghue takes Chico the cat

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “And we thank you for letting us neuter your, your lad here and we’ll bring him back safe and sound”.

09:33

Nick Morphet in vet surgery

BARBARA MILLER: There’s no better man for the job of hunting down un-neutered cats than Nick Morphet, the project’s unflappable vet,

09:40

Landscape GVs

a man who travels hundreds of kilometres in his own time to carry out this work. That means scouring the peninsular for domestic and feral cats, including one we’re calling Kitty’s Mum.

NICK MORPHET: “There was a total of about

09:50

Morphet and Miller outside house

forty cats here when we first discovered the colony a year and a half ago. We’ve since neutered 39, we’ve got one left and that’s a cat without a name, but it’s Kitty’s Mum. A lot of people think they’re doing a good thing by feeding the cats but of course if you provide the resource, then the population will expand to exploit that”.

10:04

Morphet greets Donald

“Good morning Donald… yeah, good how are you?”

DONALD: “I’m not bad, man”.

NICK MORPHET: “It was a rough night”.

DONALD: “It was indeed. We’ve got our Kitty there, I don’t know if it’s Kitty’s Mum or not”.

NICK MORPHET: “Great, well we’ll go and have a look.

10:27

Morphet looks at cat in cage

Yeah that’s her”.

BARBARA MILLER: “That’s her?”

NICK MORPHET: “Yeah, we’ve got her. Yeah, yeah she’s taken a year and a half to catch, but that’s definitely her”.

10:38

BARBARA MILLER: “And how do you know that for sure?”

NICK MORPHET: “Well we knew her to be a long haired black cat, and the fact that she hasn’t had the tip of her left ear removed means that she’s not been neutered”.

10:51

Miller with Donald and Morphet

BARBARA MILLER: “Donald, you have been essentially keeping forty cats alive? Why do you do it?”

DONALD: “Well, I sort of like the cats about the place, you know? Well, they keep the mice down and all, of course”.

11:03

BARBARA MILLER: “But Nick’s telling you many of them have got bad diseases”.

DONALD: “Well, they’re living now, they’re still living. I hope some bugger carries on feeding me even though I’m dying”.

BARBARA MILLER: Although Donald’s cooperating with the Wildcat project, he doesn’t think it will work.

11:13

DONALD: “My own personal view is, no matter what they do the cats will not come back ‘til everything’s right, and the rabbits are there and the food’s there for them. There’s nothing left for them, that’s why they die”.

11:28

NICK MORPHET: “Donald’s actually touched on a really good point there, which is that there’s more to this than preventing hybridisation. We’ve also got to look into the availability of food for the wildcats”.

11:39

BARBARA MILLER: “So you saw wildcats when you were younger?”

DONALD: “Oh aye, yes”.

BARBARA MILLER: “And when was the last time you saw one?”

DONALD: “The last time I saw a wildcat? About… that’d be when…? In the seventies I think. Seventies or eighties. I don’t think I’ll see wildcats here in my lifetime again”.

11:47

NICK MORPHET: “We’re hoping we might change that, do something about it. We’re hoping Donald might see wildcats in his lifetime”.

12:02

Morphet loads cat into car

BARBARA MILLER: With the cat in the bag it’s off to the makeshift surgery.

12:08

Morphet administers injection. Chico escapes cage

Chico was first up today, proving to be a reluctant patient. 

NICK MORPHET:  “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Worse things happen at sea.”

12:12

Morphet operates on Chico in church hall

BARBARA MILLER:  Saving the wildcat sounds glamorous but this is what it boils down to, neutering cats in a cold and remote church hall.

12:25

“Will he know he’s been neutered?”

NICK MORPHET: “He won’t, no, no. He won’t have the urges any more, but I don’t think he’ll notice that he doesn’t have them any more”.

12:40

Morphet operates on Kitty’s Mum

BARBARA MILLER: Next up the feral cat known as Kitty’s Mum. The team thought they had neutered every feral tom cat in the colony, but maybe not.

12:48

NICK MORPHET: “Yeah she’s pregnant”.

BARBARA MILLER: “Pregnant?”

NICK MORPHET: “Yeah. Lisa thought she felt a bit pregnant. I’ve just had a feel for the first time… she’s, she’s pregnant”.

BARBARA MILLER: “So that means you haven’t got every boy there”.

NICK MORPHET: “It’s a bit of a soap opera really, this thing”.

13:00

BARBARA MILLER: “So you’re not going to spay her now are you?”

NICK MORPHET: “Yeah”.

BARBARA MILLER: “You are?”

NICK MORPHET: “Oh yeah absolutely. In fact we’re extra happy that we’ve caught her, because if we allow these kittens to be born, there could be half a dozen in there and we might not catch the kittens and then they would breed and the whole problem would start again.

13:15

And don’t forget that there’s disease running throughout this colony. I think it is genuinely better for the kittens that they aren’t born, but it’s certainly better for the feral cat problem and it’s certainly better for the wildcats”.

13:35

O’Donoghue interview

BARBARA MILLER: “I find it hard to believe that you could get a community on board to neuter every single cat in a whole country”.

13:48

Super:
Dr. PAUL O’DONOGHUE

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “We want to change attitudes to pet ownership. Every cat should be microchipped, every pet cat should be neutered. The way to do this is through lobbying for legislation, so yeah, this is a battle and it’s one that we have to, and we should, win”.

13:57

Morphet operating on Kitty’s Mum

BARBARA MILLER: Some American funders of the Wildcat project are on Ardnamurchan to see their money at work.

14:12

Sandy Lerner

SANDY LERNER: “Oh I’m a crazy cat lady down to my socks”.

BARBARA MILLER: Sandy Lerner is a philanthropist and a passionate re-wilder.

14:20

SANDY LERNER: [Bosack Kruger Foundation] “I think we’re as a species beginning to understand more about the importance of genetic diversity, but probably the most

14:28

Super:
SANDY LERNER
Bosack Kruger Foundation

important reason, at least to me, is that if you’re going to save an ecosystem, the predators are the signal species and certainly

14:35

Wildcat footage

the cats and the wolves are the top predators. When you have those species preserved, you can preserve everything under it. If you don’t have those species, you know,

14:42

Sandy Lerner

the food chain just kind of gets all out of whack and it makes conservation I think pretty much impossible”.

14:51

Wildcats in zoo with chicken

BARBARA MILLER: Paul O’Donoghue’s group is not the only one trying to save the wildcat. The other school of thought is that a breeding in captivity program is needed, but that’s at odds with Paul’s purest philosophy.

14:57

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Captivity to me is not where wildcats belong. It’s a Scottish wildcat and not the Scottish zoo cat. Animals in cages, locked up in cages doesn’t help to conserve and restore this eco system. The wildcats need to be protected in the wild where they belong”.

15:15

Miller and O’Donoghue at wildcat cage

BARBARA MILLER: “Can’t you do both? Can’t you do what you’re doing plus in cooperat ion or in harmony with what zoos are doing?”

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “I don’t think you can with the wildcat because it’s last chance saloon.

15:30

Wildcats in zoo cage

If we were to capture a significant proportion of that population and put them in a zoo, well that damages the chances of wild populations recovering. Every wildcat in the wild counts. It should be kept in the wild where it belongs and it should breed in the wild.

15:40

Miller and O’Donoghue at wildcat cage

That’s really, really important, that’s fundamental to our project”.

15:53

Lynx in zoo enclosure

BARBARA MILLER: Here at the wildlife centre we also get the chance to see another wildcat, the focus of another of Paul’s re-wilding projects - this one much more controversial.

[observing lynx in enclosure] “Paul I’ve got to say I’m looking at that

15:57

Miller and O’Donoghue at lynx enclosure

and going, are you seriously going to release some of those into the wild? I find that quite scary”.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “I don’t know why.

16:13

Lynx in zoo enclosure

That’s a very dainty cat. It’s about the size of a Labrador. It doesn’t weigh as much as a Labrador. They’re no threat to humans whatsoever. There’s not a single case of an attack of a wild lynx on a human in human history. They are zero risk to people”.

BARBARA MILLER: “And if I went in there now?”

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “No problem at all.

16:2 0

Miller and O’Donoghue at lynx enclosure

No problem at all. But also this is a captive lynx, this is in no way representative of a wild animal. If this was the wild, you would have no chance whatsoever of getting that close to a wild lynx”.

16:39

Wild lynx in snow

BARBARA MILLER: “The nearest wild lynx are in continental Europe. Paul has already been to Romania to source them from populations like this and is applying for a licence

16:50

Miller driving over border into England

to bring them to the UK for a five year trial project. We’re heading south to where Paul wants to release the animals, just over the border in England, a land of quaint villages where tourism and sheep farming bolster a depressed economy.

17:01

Kielder Forest

It’s here in Kielder Forest that Paul would like to release the lynx, thirteen hundred years after they were hunted to extinction in Britain, around the time the Vikings first invaded.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “So lynx will cause

17:20

O’Donoghue interview

what we call an ecology of fear. So at the moment when you go through a Scottish forest, the deer are quite tame. They’re quite sedentary,

17:33

Deer

there’s no predators. They sit around, they eat out an area and they move on. With an apex predator like a lynx coming back in, you’ll see an almost instant change in behaviour. So you’ll get reduced impacts across the whole forest and you’ll get also some impact on deer numbers”.

17:43

Miller to camera walking in forest

BARBARA MILLER: “The theory goes that this area of forest is so large, sixteen hundred square kilometres and the lynx such an elusive creature that even if there were one right here, you’d never know”.

17:58

Dalton in sheep shed

But farmers will take some persuasion.

18:11

Sheep in pens

GREG DALTON: “We seem to get people that have come out of

18:16

Dalton interview

university that have a PhD or a degree and they seem to know it all, and theoretically they probably do, but on a practical level they are so far removed from really what is happening on the ground. They’re almost slightly delusional to really what is going on out in the British countryside”.

18:18

Sheep farm GVs

BARBARA MILLER: Greg Dalton’s family has farmed this unforgiving land for four generations.

GREG DALTON: “My father was brought up in that house over there. He was one of twelve

18:36

Dalton interview. Super:
GREG DALTON
Sheep Farmer

and as I say, the family’s been sort of in this area since the mid-1850s.

18:45

Sheep flock. Dalton on quad bike

To me, as a farmer, you’re either in it or you’re not. It’s one of those things you can’t do half cocked. You’ve got to be passionate about it. You don’t do it for the money, you do it for the love”.

18:49

Dalton watches sheep in barn pens

BARBARA MILLER: “He’s got no time for the re-wilders.

GREG DALTON: “Nobody’s going to be putting

18:59

Dalton interview

up with sheep being killed by a lynx. It’ll get to the point they’ll just sell up and move away and the land will be left to go back to the mess of re-wilding and well, God knows what it’ll end up looking like”.

19:04

O’Donoghue meets Dalton at Kielder Forest Observatory

BARBARA MILLER: Nevertheless Greg has at our behest agreed to meet Paul to discuss his concerns. [they greet each other] It starts out friendly enough. They’re meeting at a viewpoint high above Kielder Forest where if Paul has his way, the lynx may soon roam.

GREG DALTON: “This is a massive concern.

19:16

Dalton and O’Donoghue

Talking to the guys that farm in Norway they’ve found that the lynx have become quite bold. The sheep are kept in sheds mainly through the winter time, they’ve actually found sheep, where there’s a lynx actually coming into the sheds and taking sheep”.

19:41

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “I look very closely at the scientific data from all across Europe and the simple fact of the matter is, that lynx kill an average 0.4 sheep per lynx per year”.

19:52

GREG DALTON: “Well we can all get facts and figures and as I say, I think when you…”

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Well give me, give me them, give me them. You, you tell me then, you tell me then how many, you tell me how many, what percentage of ground nesting birds make up a lynx diet. You won’t be able to tell me. Give me the facts”.

GREG DALTON: “Can I ask give you… on Wikipedia it mentions obviously your grouse is a prey of a lynx. Is that correct?”

20:03

[shot continuous]

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “You’re getting your stuff from Wikipedia?

GREG DALTON: “I looked on Wikipedia”.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Come on… you can do better than that Greg. Is that your best?”

20:19

Dalton and O’Donoghue continue at Kielder Forest Observatory

GREG DALTON: “You say it’s a fantastic habitat, what happens also when you get large numbers and all of a sudden

20:25

you have a large swathe of them and then what do they do? Do they spread out?”

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “Did you just say a large swathe of lynx?”

GREG DALTON: “Yeah”.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “They live in territories with one lynx per probably every twenty square miles. You’ll never get... this is again completely incorrect what you’re saying. You’ll never get - it’s unprecedented - population explosion of an apex predator. It’s biologically unprecedented.

20:29

They’re a different animal to what you think they are”.

20:51

GREG DALTON: “They haven’t been here for thirteen hundred years, you can’t tell me the world’s the same place it was thirteen hundred years ago”.

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “That’s because we killed every one last of them.

20:54

Lynx are the very least of your worries. In fact there’s a strong case that lynx will reduce sheep predation because lynx are quite significant fox predators and in Europe they’ve shown they’ve reduced fox populations by ten per cent”.

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GREG DALTON: “I think I would question those figures. Personally I feel that’s a bit of a falsehood.

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DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “If you’ve got evidence to contradict what we’re saying then bring it in and we genuinely want to see it. You should love lynx. I really... I really hope you do”.

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Forest canopy

BARBARA MILLER: “So Greg, well what did you make of the lynx man as you call him?”

21:24

Dalton interview

GREG DALTON: “I think he was a very smooth operator and he talks a good talk but I’m afraid he still has a hell of a lot of questions to answer in my mind”.

21:29

O’Donoghue walking in forest

Music

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DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “I’m a scientist so I look at things objectively. The literature, the scientific data is unequivocal. Just because a farmer thinks a lynx is a sheep predator, it doesn’t mean they are”.

21:43

Denmark GVs

BARBARA MILLER: Across the sea in Denmark they’re taking re-wilding to the limit, starting with what seems like a fairly modest project.

21:57

Randers Zoo. Bison

Right next door to Randers Zoo in central Denmark and within a stone’s throw of the city is a herd of European bison bought from Poland – eight thousand years after they disappeared from this region.

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Svenning

PROFESSOR JENS-CHRISTIAN SVENNING: “One of the interesting... in using bison in re-wilding in Denmark is to get grazing animals of this size out into nature

22:27

Bison grazing

to do their grazing and do their browsing and help maintain open to semi open vegetation”.

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Svenning stands before stuffed mammoth

BARBARA MILLER: Professor Jens-Christian Svenning based at Aarhus University in Denmark is one of the pioneers of the re-wilding movement in Europe.

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Svenning interview. Super:
Prof. JENS-CHRISTIAN SVENNING
Aarhus University

PROFESSOR JENS-CHRISTIAN SVENNING: “We really see massive losses of biodiversity at the moment and if we look to the future we see dark skies, we see really negative predictions of future extinctions due to habitat loss and due to climate change and I think it’s an obligation for scientists to work on helping us to overcome this so that we don’t lose the biodiversity”.

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Svenning with stuffed animals

BARBARA MILLER: Now Professor Svenning and his team are working on the wildest re-wilding project yet.

PROFESSOR JENS-CHRISTIAN SVENNING: “So when I

23:12

Svenning interview

talk to people about bringing back Asian elephants to Europe, a first response is of course often that people think it’s a crazy idea,

23:19

Elephants

but if we don’t dramatically change the way we deal with the conservation crisis for big animals like the African and Asian elephants and like the

23:29

Svenning interview

rhinos, we have a strong risk that we’ll lose many of these species”.

23:39

File footage. Elephant tusks/Elephants

BARBARA MILLER: Professor Svenning fears poaching combined with the loss of habitat could spell the end for the elephant in the wild within decades. He thinks it’s time to consider moving elephants to places like Denmark where they can be safe.

23:43

Svenning interview

PROFESSOR JENS-CHRISTIAN SVENNING: “All over Europe we’ve had elephants for more than fifty million years and then with the expansion of modern humans across Europe, elephants were lost.

23:59

Elephant with baby

So that’s the idea of thinking to reintroduce elephants, that they really do belong here”.

24:06

Artist’s impression of pre-ice age European Temperate elephant. Super:
Artist’s impression

BARBARA MILLER: The European temperate elephant found here during the Ice Age is now extinct,

24:13

Asian elephant in jungle

but the theory goes that the Asian elephant is closely enough related that it could be introduced to northern Europe.

24:18

Svenning interview

PROFESSOR JENS-CHRISTIAN SVENNING: “We don’t actually know if Denmark in the winter time would be too cold for the Asian elephant. In historic times, Asian elephants roamed in China up into Northern China in areas that today get as cold as in Denmark.

24:25

Elephant grazing

I would also expect that we would see experiments with elephants in more or less natural settings in Denmark and probably also

24:39

Svenning interview

elsewhere in Europe within the next ten years. It would be highly surprising to me if this doesn’t happen because the scientific basis for doing these experiments is really solid”.

24:47

O’Donoghue interview

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “I wouldn’t advocate bringing elephants back to Europe. To be quite frank, I think that’s a ridiculous idea. I think it’s hugely damaging for this kind of conservation re-wilding movement, because it instantly gets someone’s back up. If I say I want to bring lynx back, that’s sensible. They used to be here. Elephants were here a long, long, long time ago and the climate has changed since they were last here.

24:55

Lynx

It’s about bringing the right animals back at the right time in the right way.

25:18

O’Donoghue interview

It’s about doing things properly and strategically”.

25:25

Farmer with cow on estate/Morphet operating on cat

BARBARA MILLER: But one thing the re-wilders have in common is a conviction that only radical action will suffice, not just from scientists

25:28

Maclean and miller around fire

but the whole community.

25:37

Maclean interview. Super:
Laird EWEN MACLEAN
Landowner

LAIRD EWEN MACLEAN: “It is a very, very important project to take forward I think. I’m really proud that we’re part of that. It’s a survivor. It’s been here since Scotland was born and let’s hope we keep it that way”.

25:39

O’Donoghue walking in forest

SANDY LERNER: “I think people who don’t accept the status quo are too often regarded as crazy.

25:53

Sandy Lerner

I think there’s some leadership involved, there’s certainly courage, there’s commitment, there’s passion, there’s all sorts of things that are good. Does that make a person crazy? I’ll sign up”.

25:59

Wildcat footage

DR PAUL O’DONOGHUE: “They think I’m a dreamer,

26:09

O’Donoghue interview

but I’m not the only one, as they say, and that’s good - and you have to dream because if you don’t, what’s the point?”

26:14

Deer cross river

Reporter: Barbara Miller

Producer: Suzanne Smith

Camera: David Martin

Research: Ian Lynch

Editor: Matthew Walker

Executive producer: Marianne Leitch

abc.net.au/foreign
ABC © 2016

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