> and Scotland's ecology isn't obviously in need of them.
If you've visited Scotland's countryside, you might have noticed the sweeping vistas of grassy green fields, yellow bushy marshes, and purple heather -- and a conspicuous absence of any trees. It's a very unnatural landscape, historically speaking.
Scotland (along with the rest of the UK) cut down most of their old growth forests in the industrial revolution, and also eliminated all of the large predators. As a result, the wild deer population is out of control, and even with management (read: stalking wild deer) there are so many deer that it's impossible to simply plant trees and have them reforest; deer will eat and destroy the saplings before they can mature.
This arrests the natural reforestation that would occur over time, and makes even managed projects expensive -- for example here's a charity that is working on reforesting a plot of land in Scotland: https://bordersforesttrust.org/places/wild-heart/carrifran-w.... They had to hire someone to kill deer on their land to protect the new trees, even after expensive plastic casings.
That's a long-winded bit of context, but the summarized argument for re-introducing large predators is that they would help to control the damaging and out-of-balance wild deer population, reducing the amount of human intervention required, and allowing the countryside to revert back to its natural forested state.
Be that as it may, the ancient world definitely went through a lot of trees, when they were the principle source of energy.
To put that in some perspective, a Roman legion (roughly 5,000 men) in the Late Republic might have carried into battle around 44,000kg (c. 48.5 tons) of iron – not counting pots, fittings, picks, shovels and other tools we know they used. That iron equipment in turn might represent the mining of around 541,200kg (c. 600 tons) of ore, smelted with 642,400kg (c. 710 tons) of charcoal, made from 4,620,000kg (c. 5,100 tons) of wood. Cutting the wood and making the charcoal alone, from our figures above, might represent something like (I am assuming our charcoal-burners are working in teams) 80,000 man-days of labor. For one legion.https://acoup.blog/2020/09/25/collections-iron-how-did-they-...
I think his point was that in Europe, most deforestation happened much earlier than the industrial revolution, and he wanted to clear the relatively common misconception that everything was green until the industrial revolution.
Right! But as I understand it, most of this wood was from managed forest, which allowed for much more efficient harvesting and also allowed for controlling various qualities of the wood.
Lindybeige has a good video on the topic. It doesn't quite go back to Roman times though.
From same blog, who sourced, the impression I got was that medieval-period industrial activity featured more forest management, as it was private property / a resource.
In Roman times... We know, for instance, that Elba was almost totally deforested during the Roman period to fuel the bloomeries smelting the ore and Pliny notes in his Natural History that smelting (not always of iron) had substantially reduced forest-stocks in parts of Gaul and Campagnia. Roman iron production in the eastern High Weald of England may have deforested something like 500km2 over the course of three centuries and there is reason to believe that Roman-period iron production in this area stopped because of scarcity of fuel, rather than ore. Iron-working was hardly the only factor in the steady deforestation of Europe, but it was a major factor.
So apparently Roman-era metal production was sufficient to deforest isolated large islands, but probably not for mainland areas better able to reforest themselves.
As with most of the forest in the UK, it was cut down for timber and then did not regrow because of deer. This has been happening for thousands of years.
There is an excellent documentary that covers a broad range of perspectives on this issue called "The Cull - Scotland's deer dilemma" https://thecullfilm.com/
As someone born and raised in the highlands, I found it well balanced as well as providing a realistic depiction of the Highland winter.
Apparently the covid pandemic has exacerbated this issue, because a lot of wild venison goes to the restaurant trade, and that market pretty much disappeared. Result: more deer overpopulation and damage to ecosystems.
Lynx are native to Scotland, I don't believe that rabbits are, they are usually considered to have been introduced by the Normans in the 12th century. According to the wikipedia article the lynx appears to have a pretty varied diet
Why wouldn't rabbits be native? It's not so long ago that Great Britain was connected to mainland Europe, so I'd think that most of the same animals would be present both sides of the North Sea.
European Rabbits are native to the iberian peninsula and southern France, they were introduced to the British Isles either by the Romans or the Normans. There's more information about this on the Wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_rabbit
Apparently they hunt and kill deer and reindeer in Finland.[1] I would have thought the same but seeing your comment prompted me to do a search. Found a handful of YouTube vids claiming the featured Lynx killed the deer they were recording, but none of the first 5 I checked featured a Lynx performing the kill, only the eating.
Google says there are 100,000 deer, 200,000 reindeer and ~1200 lynx. So there's enough that they could make a difference (but it matters a lot how often they would take a deer).
Turns out we suck at engineering ecology: about the best we can do is introduce a wild population into conditions we think they’ll survive and let nature take its course. Prey and predators eventually reach their own sort of equilibrium if we leave them to it, absent factors which are severely detrimental to either.
And this isn’t a deer extermination project either: it’s a lynx reintroduction project.
"Something most be done. This is something. Therefore, this must be done." is a well-known logical fallacy.
Introducing non-native species can have unexpected consequences. Though lynxes do prey on deer, they also prey on birds and smaller mammals, which would put them in competition with Scottish wildcats, which are endangered. We can't be sure that introducing lynxes won't drive Scottish wildcats to extinction.
There are other solutions to the problem you mention. Deer can be shot and the venison sold in supermarkets and other outlets (restaurants, once COVID-19 is under control). This already happens, albeit on a small scale. Venison could also be exported but there's now a lot of extra paperwork which needs to be done now that we've left the EU.
Why think twice? There are many many large predators in the US and we get along fine. The US outside of Alaska has thousands of wolves, 10's of thousands of mountain lions, 100's of thousands of bears, millions of crocodiles, millions of coyotes, etc... no major problems. And they're not just in the sparsely inhabited west, densely populated north-east states like NY, PA, NJ, MA, CT ,etc. have thousands of bears and coyotes (though admittedly not many wolves).
My dad's back yard has a view of Lake Superior. A couple of times he has seen a black bear wander through his back yard, and he occasionally sees a wolf stalking some deer in his back yard.
He doesn't have a dog, but some of his neighbors sometimes have their dogs cower up to their owners during walks because they smell wolves. Supposedly some people have seen wolves stalking their dogs, but I haven't heard of dogs being killed by wolves in the area.
It's mostly safe for adults, but I wouldn't let a kid run around alone in my dad's yard, mostly for fear of the rapidly flowing small river, but also due to wolves and bears.
Crossbows are easy to use and don't alarm neighbors. Venison is delicious and nutritious. Butchering a deer is a fun and educational project for the whole family, and requires very little equipment: knives and a big table, plus a tree limb and some rope for the initial skinning. This is yet another problem that people could solve for themselves, if enough of them cared to do so.
Most land in Scotland is owned by large estate owners (think castles and thousands of acres).
We have extremely strict gun control and hunting is usually limited to employees of the estates or visitors who have paid a hefty fee to hunt on the estate.
Hunting here is much more controlled and limited than it is in North America or elsewhere.
Source: Highlands born and raised, live in Canada.
I grew up eating deer and partridge (ruffed grouse) and in my opinion, they aren't delicious. They don't taste good because the have very little fat. (Moose do taste good for some reason.) To make deer hamburgers you have to add beef fat.
If you have eaten wild game that tasted good I suspect it was augmented in some way. We used have some sort of gravy or marinade on deer meat and pin some bacon on partridge.
"Gordon Ramsay Demonstrates How To Cook Venison With A Red Wine & Chocolate Sauce"
I haven't eaten partridge. Venison is low in fat, so it requires different techniques than beef or pork. Braising (even crock-potting) will work better than roasting or grilling. Frying, including stir-frying, also works well. To me these are simply different techniques, but those who consider gravy exotic might call them "augmentation". If one must roast, by all means do as Mr. Ramsay and fry first. I submit that his dish would have been better sous-vide, but the loin will be good as long as you don't burn it.
> Butchering a deer is a fun and educational project for the whole family
I would find it gross and traumatic to the point where I might lose my lunch. I eat meat, but if I had to butcher my own meat I'd go vegetarian.
I like your solution though, I'm surprised that the market doesn't just solve the problem to the point where we're worried about there being too few deer - is hunting limited or is there not enough demand for venison?
I suspect that hunting, field dressing, and butchering lost their mainstream appeal soon after industrialization.
It's one thing to do these things once a month on a hunting trip for leisure versus doing it nearly every week in order to maintain your property or community. It's like the difference between gardening as a hobby versus farming as a lifestyle.
The amount of hunting needed to control the deer population and the population of able bodied and sufficiently interested hunters simply doesn't scale properly in most communities.
Predators who hunt as their main purpose and niche in life seems like a more viable solution if we determine how to keep the livestock predation to an acceptable level.
> I'm surprised that the market doesn't just solve the problem to the point where we're worried about there being too few deer
The market has solved the problem of food: it is plentiful, cheap and varied. That has decreased the need to hunt to the point that most[1] of those who do so are making a lifestyle choice that is not strictly economical but does in some way provide a respectable and different experience or quality of life they enjoy.
[1] As always I feel compelled to remind people that “most” is not a synonym for “all”.
> I eat meat, but if I had to butcher my own meat I'd go vegetarian.
I don't mean to be impolite or judgmental, but I'm wondering if can you share a bit more about how you're able to justify it when someone else is doing the dirty work? I too eat meat, and part of my desire to learn to hunt is to experience the full effect of it, from stalk, to kill, to cleaning, to plate. I've never cleaned anything larger than a redfish, but it's something I'm intensely curious about.
>I would find it gross and traumatic to the point where I might lose my lunch
That's just because you're not used to it. My grand-mother used to kill and butcher chickens, guinea hens and rabbits in front of me as a kid and I've been to quite a few post-hunting parties. It just doesn't move anymore.
Thats a side effect of a life sheltered from nature.
I'm a city boy, but I was sent to the countryside every once in a while to learn how to kill and butcher animals so I could respect what nature has given us.
My grandparents owned/ran a farm, so I grew up in a city but spent my summer holidays there. I learned pretty early on that we don't give names to the animals.
That said I've no qualms about doing the "dirty work" myself, if necessary. I can't imagine how it ever would be, but I'm kinda grateful I got to see where meat, and to a lesser extent crops, come from. As well as appreciating exactly how much work it is.
Nowadays I have a small allotment for growing food, but I know damn well farming life is not for me. For fun at a tiny scale is interesting and rewarding. Doing it commercially is a hell of a lot of work. (Though I know nothing of the American-styled "super-farms" with all the automation.)
> Butchering a deer is a fun and educational project for the whole family
Yep, children will always remember with joy their first exposure to the marvels of Cephenemyia. Like catching apples in a barrel but a much more vibrating activity.
I killed my first when I was 13. I have killed many with rifle and bow, from treestands and from the ground, in rural Missouri and Colorado. I replied to an observation about suburban Midwestern USA deer, which is a completely different thing. Deer that won't leave your yard can be killed with a crossbow shot from your back porch. I recommended a crossbow because they are legal in most states now during the lengthy bow seasons (a development to which I strenuously if foolishly objected), they aren't as disturbing to your neighbors, and they are safer to use in a suburban setting.
I certainly don't recommend anyone "stalk" across the denuded Scottish hills.
If you've visited Scotland's countryside, you might have noticed the sweeping vistas of grassy green fields, yellow bushy marshes, and purple heather -- and a conspicuous absence of any trees. It's a very unnatural landscape, historically speaking.
Scotland (along with the rest of the UK) cut down most of their old growth forests in the industrial revolution, and also eliminated all of the large predators. As a result, the wild deer population is out of control, and even with management (read: stalking wild deer) there are so many deer that it's impossible to simply plant trees and have them reforest; deer will eat and destroy the saplings before they can mature.
This arrests the natural reforestation that would occur over time, and makes even managed projects expensive -- for example here's a charity that is working on reforesting a plot of land in Scotland: https://bordersforesttrust.org/places/wild-heart/carrifran-w.... They had to hire someone to kill deer on their land to protect the new trees, even after expensive plastic casings.
That's a long-winded bit of context, but the summarized argument for re-introducing large predators is that they would help to control the damaging and out-of-balance wild deer population, reducing the amount of human intervention required, and allowing the countryside to revert back to its natural forested state.