Illegal rewilders are taking over the countryside

Hardly a month goes by without a report of guerrilla rewilders at work. Lynx released in the Cairngorms, wild boar on Dartmoor, beavers everywhere and, no doubt, before long, wolves and bears – if neo-Rousseauist guerrillas can find a ready supply and achieve it without being bitten.

Usually, these illegal releases of formerly indigenous-but-no-longer-native animals are in national parks, reinforcing my view that national parks give people a state-sponsored sense of entitlement to behave as they please on private land. The fact that the vast majority of farmers are against such reintroductions seems to give added incentive to the rewilding guerrillas. The extinction of family farms at the hands of Rachel from Customer Complaints is bad enough. But evidence from the continent – of damage to livestock, crops and livelihoods by newly introduced species – causes further fears.