Wildcat

 

I was reading an article today about a proposal to re-introduce the lynx to Scotland which on the face of it I was for. I like the idea of going back to the way things were before man intervened. I remember reading a book about the history of Scotland and the author lamenting about a particular landscape looking beautiful to most but it saddened him because hundreds of years earlier the barren hills would have been filled with trees. I like the idea that there was a balance before we selfishly came along here and everywhere else on the planet to spoil it with our own needs and greeds.

So I was reading through the article and early on came to a line saying the lynx had been extinct in Britain for 500 years, I think that varies on where you read it. Strange. I thought I had taken a picture of one in captivity. I looked back and found the above photo from 2015 taken at Calderglen zoo in East Kilbride. Not a lynx but a Scottish wildcat. What then, if any, is the difference? 

It turns out they are very different and now a dilemma: save the Scottish wildcat or reintroduce the Lynx? I am all for going back to our roots as I said but not if it means turfing out another species in the process. It's a big debate, too big for here. The bottom line is reintroduced lynx is a random factor. No one seems to know what affect it will have on the wildcats native to Scotland which are apparently on the brink of exctinction as it is with numbers estimated to be less than 300. As well as the ones at the zoo above there are captive cats all over the UK in the likes of the Highland Wildlife Park and Chester zoo among others. For me that is not a risk worth taking but it's a debate. If nothing else it was nice reading about wildlife which is not something I'm prone to do. There are some beautiful nature programs by the BBC but I never see them. Its given me a bit of an appetite for that if nothing else.