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5 hours ago
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For a brief moment this week, lynx have been roaming the Scottish Highlands once again. But this was not the way conservationists had hoped to end their 1,000-year absence.
On Wednesday, Police Scotland received reports of two lynx in a forest in the Cairngorms national park, sparking a frantic search. That episode ended in less than a day. Both animals were quickly captured by experts from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and taken to quarantine facilities at Highland wildlife park.
Yet their delight at a successful operation was short-lived. Early on Friday morning, the RZSS’s network of wildlife cameras caught two more lynx in the same stretch of forest, near Kingussie. The baited traps were redeployed, and its specialists were hunting again.
Speculation has erupted over who was responsible for the illegal release, and police said inquiries were continuing to establish the full circumstances. Both lynx – which are shy, solitary animals in the wild and not dangerous to humans – appeared tame and showed little sign of being able to survive on their own, according to a witness. The witness said the lynx were found near straw bedding left beside a layby with dead chicks and porcupine quills.
On social media, some pointed the finger at rogue rewilders taking the law into their own hands by making the return of lynx a fact on the ground, akin to how beavers returned to the UK through unauthorised “beaver bombing”.
Studies indicate that the Highlands could support as many as 400 lynx in the wild and there is strong support for their return among environmental groups. But leading voices in the rewilding sector were quick to condemn this week’s unauthorised release as “reckless” and “highly irresponsible”.
Dave Barclay, the RZSS expert leading the hunt for the lynx, was furious. These animals were semi-tame and “highly habituated to people”, he said, yet had been released in deep winter. Temperatures locally had plunged below -5C, with deep snow cover, and they had been released at the mouth of a forest track heavily used by logging machinery.
“All of that compromises the welfare of these animals,” he said. “It is abhorrent what has happened here, and against all international good practice.”
Investigators now suspect the lynx could be from a family group. The two captured yesterday are understood to be juveniles, cubs aged about one or two years of age, while the two spotted on Friday are thought to be an adult and a third juvenile.
Ben Goldsmith, an environmentalist who said he was not involved with the release, said: “Like many others, I have been momentarily thrilled by the notion of lynx once again stalking the Cairngorms. Lynx are an iconic native species missing from Britain and they should be back here. The habitat is perfect, these are secretive animals, and there are no good reasons not to reintroduce them.
“We don’t know the story behind these missing lynx – perhaps they are abandoned pets that have become unmanageable. Whatever has happened, it seems to have been poorly thought through,” he added.
The lynx were found on the Killiehuntly estate of the Danish billionaire Anders Povlsen. A spokesperson for WildLand, the company that runs his Scottish estates, said they believed that native predators should only be reintroduced lawfully and in close collaboration with local people.
In the UK, citizens must apply to their local council to keep wild animals legally. According to figures collected by Born Free in 2023, 31 lynx were kept by private collectors under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976, which does not include zoos. All were housed in England. Experts said that more lynx were likely to be held in unauthorised private collections that were difficult to monitor.
“There could be far more lynx in private hands that are actually recorded. If they have cubs, they may not register them. People would be gobsmacked of what people have in their back garden. I know of people who have snow leopards and cougars in their back garden. It’s shocking. It should be banned,” said Dr Paul O’Donoghue, director of the Lynx UK Trust, who also said he was not involved with therelease.
Were it not for the Channel, lynx would probably already have returned to the UK. Now a protected species in Europe, the Eurasian lynx has recovered from a few hundred in the 1950s to as many as 10,000. Research shows there is mixed support for their return in the UK, with strong opposition from farmers, who fear they will attack livestock.
Edward Mountain, MSP for the Highlands and Islands and a landowner, said there was a “genuine fear” among local people about “guerrilla rewilding”. “We saw it with beavers on the Tay, now there’s talk of reintroducing sea eagles and goshawks. It can change an entire local ecosystem and that’s dangerous if it’s not done properly,” he said.
