Any thoughts?

______________________________________________
The sight of a moose wandering through the Scottish Highlands has not been seen for more than 1,000 years.

But a BBC documentary to be aired this week shows the largest member of the deer family back in its historic grazing grounds, as part of a controversial plan to reintroduce extinct wildlife to Britain.

The multimillion-pound scheme by a Scottish landowner Paul Lister aims to bring back long-vanished species to his 23,000 acre Alladale estate, north of Inverness.

And Mr Lister's ideas do not end with the moose - he has established a breeding population of wild boar and wants to reintroduce brown bear, lynx and wolves.

He is also planting 80,000 native trees including Caledonian pine, juniper, hazel and round birch to recreate the traditional forest which once covered the hills.

Wild boar, which exist in feral populations in a number of spots in the UK having escaped from farms and wildlife parks, are useful in conservation because their burrowing and foraging loosens the soil and aids the growth of trees.

Mr Lister said he wants to reintroduce large predators including brown bear and wolves to control the growing population of red deer and stop the damage they do through overgrazing.

But the plans are - unsurprisingly - controversial.

Farmers are concerned about the welfare of their livestock and are demanding the animals be fenced in, while ramblers say such fencing would destroy their right to roam.

And a fence around the estate would mean that under the law the park could just count as a giant zoo - which would mean it was illegal to put predators and prey together.

Despite the difficulties he faces, Mr Lister is determined to recreate the wilderness that his estate would once have been.

"There's always going to be people out there that go: 'This isn't going to work. He's a crackpot, this, that and the other'," he said.

"But as long as the majority of people can see what we are trying to achieve here, then it will happen," he insisted.

:: The Natural World documentary, A Moose In The Glen, will be shown on BBC2 on Wednesday, April 16, at 8pm.

Article: http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 09070.html

More info: http://www.mikebirkhead.com/AlladaleRew ... otland.htm

Silly Europeans, it took you thousands of years to devestate your native fauna and flora. You should have waited until industrialization, that way you could've accomplished just as much in about 200 years.

There's been a ton of debate over the reintroduction of the gray wolf to the Rocky Mountain region around Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming for years. Farmers hate them because they attack livestock, and hunters hate them because they attack deer. They were just removed from the endangered species list and now the above people are excited that they can start shooting them again. (Of course, I'm not sure if they realize that it'll put wolves on the list again).

Is reintroducing moose to a country with windy single lane roads really a good idea?

seriously man, we can't have wolves ruining humans' ability to hunt.

No kidding--how else are we going to keep the Nuge occupied?

Yeah, they introduced the grey wolf to the Blue Range in Arizona several years ago, and since then, they've had trouble stopping the ranchers from shooting them. They have trackers on the wolves so they can tell if they die; problem is, the wolf doesn't stop moving until it's dropped off a cliff somewhere miles from the actual ranch.

Can't say I wouldn't do the same thing if they were attacking my cattle.

One of the main points that people make to condone the seal hunt is by saying that the seals eat a lot of cod, which we need to get ourselves, so we need to kill the seals in order to get more cod. How dare the seals eat our food.

That's a little different as people don't fish for cod for sport. Nor do we fish cod in order to "cull the herd". We fish cod for food, period. Deer however, are hunted for both sport and to limit their population, food use being more a by-product of those two things for a great many hunters.

Oh yeah, because I mean, wolves >>> humans.

Yeah, cuz I mean, seals >>>> humans.

Every hunter I've ever known eats the venison, and sometimes even hunt for the sole purpose of getting a year's supply of venison.

That's not inconsistent with what I said.

So are you not in favor of any human restrictions to preserve the welfare of other species?

No, but the difference between cod fishing and deer hunting is only in magnitude. Some people fish for sport, too. I would actually consider catch-and-release fishing to be more barbaric a practice than hunting.

spoken as a true experienced canadian, eh?
there's a bunch of such issues surrounding this, but as it says, they can't fence them in and not separate predators and prey. unless the law is changed of course... make this land a special zone with provisions for it or something.

How did this thread go this far without this?

because nessie isn't extinct, david. she's very much extant.