rudedog wrote: ↑Fri Apr 21, 2023 11:30 amWolves definitely are the answer (along with Lynx) but this government aren't interested (wealthy elite against it maybe?)fatbikephil wrote: ↑Tue Apr 18, 2023 10:03 pm Hundreds of roe deer round my way this year (ok slight exaggeration but I've seen way more than years past recently) I was speaking to someone involved in land management who reckons it's down to an increasing reluctance by farmers to allow people to shoot on their land due to the liability hassles along with increasing cost and hassles of gun ownership. I'm slightly on the fence with this as I don't personally agree with shooting fluffy creatures for the sake if it, whilst being OK if it puts them onto a dinner table. But as roe deer have no predators (other than cars) then no shooting means their numbers will increase, they will over-run habitats and chomp their way through young trees, plants etc....
Wolves are the answer
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/202 ... -hold.html
There's the guy (Paul Lister - family own MFI) up in Alladale (next glen down from Croik) who has long term plans to "rewild" that estate. Then there's Anders Povlsen at Glen Feshie who took the deer population from 50/km2 down to a couple - https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2022 ... ng-holiday
Like it or loath it, we (humans) are the top predator now. In the 1980s the Forestry Commision and/or the management company undertook a cull of red deer in this commercial woodland http://streetmap.co.uk/map?X=338910&Y=486195&A=Y&Z=120, they killed 1500 deer and reckoned there was still a substantial population. Back to Glen Feshie, there was a TV series on "Wild" Scotland where they interviewed the estate manager and he was describing the clientele who'd come up on shooting weekends/trips as essentially drunken louts. Rifles and rounds suitable for deer have to have a minimum calibre and muzzle velocity (punch) to ensure it's a kill rather than a wound - think along the lines of the size of a AAA battery but weighing 100g and travelling at over 800m/s - and that's not something you want in the wrong hands.
Wolves (and to some extent Lynx) tend to need proper wilderness which, without extensive depopulation (actually de-agrification) of the upland areas, we don't have in the UK. Wolves and livestock tend not to mix too well as the latter are easy meat for the wolves. Just look at the hassle sea eagles have (allegedly or otherwise) caused regards lambing. Lynx might be better suited, certainly for Roe Deer, but you might have to restrict any human access to some areas - dunno much about how they react to human disturbance and on what level/frequency.
Rewilding sounds good in principle but the sticking point is just to when do we wind the clock back? Go back 25,000 years and you'd have to get McAlpines in with a fleet of bulldozers stripping all vegetation and soil away but then they might have a little problem replicating the couple of kilometres of ice sitting on top of the landscape!