Wildlife UK Forum - Discuss the UK countryside and wildlife

I'm sure wolves will be re-introduced to some parts of the highlands of Scotland. However it is unlikely that these will be free roaming in the sense they can roam from coast to coast at will. The public have been reared on too many tales of Little Red Riding Hood to allow this to happen. Indeed when I first heard of this idea over 20 years ago one of the Scottish Isle owned by ??? (Rhum I think) there was an uproar. It is however full of other issues. One of the objections to keeping them on a private estate - no matter how large is that fencing off a large part of Scotland would prevent the right to roam for humans - something walkers and others have spent a long time campaigning for.

Over 25 years ago a young wolf in northern Norway started walking south - towards the cities. The papers and other media had a field day ("lock up your grannies and children!!") Not good news for the wolf. Bounty hunters went after it but it was given public protection. Alas poor wolf, it chose to come south using a winter road free of deep snow (it was winter time)
It was eventually found dead after being run over. Pictures abounded in the press of the poor animal stretched out, mouth forced apart to show those poor people in the south what a lucky escape they had!!

Oh I agree very much, as a nation we're not at all familiar with the concept of large wild animals being around and most people have no idea how to be around them, education and baby steps is really important but I'd like to have some hope that we could find space for them again; for all the diversity of British nature we've lost some of the most compelling, thrilling and charismatic aspects of it, plus with wolves you do have a big pay off for people who don't care about the animals, a wild pack of wolves in a certain area of Scotland could be big bucks to the tourism industry, I've seen estimates that species like wildcat, golden eagle and otter are worth £4-5m each in tourist money every year, the return of big predators could easily exceed that.

I'd love to see wolves back in this country but like others who have posted, I have reservations about whether it would work. Unfortunately history has a way of repeating itself and how long would it be before wolves started to be hunted and persecuted again? I'm also not sure that we would be able to keep them in the wilds of Scotland. Wouldn't they spread out as their numbers increased? It would only take one farmer to loose a lamb for the blame to start descending. Fantastic idea but.....