The same debate is going over in the Pyrenees regarding reintroduction of bears. Farmers fear for their sheep (seem to be especially the case on the French side from what I've gathered) but guard dogs seem to reduce their losses tremendously.

My main source of information is Steve Cracknell who's a writes about rewilding of the Pyrenees as well as hiking. I encountered his blog and twitter as part of my preparation for my thruehike of the Haute Raute Pyrenees. This is his twitter: https://twitter.com/enmarchant

The "patou" in the Pyrénées are big 50+ kg white fluff balls and they sometimes take their job a bit too seriously. They most probably won’t attack hikers but they may occasionally encourage them to go for a good sprint far around the herd.

Sheep farming is pretty uneconomic in the UK, and sheep are destructive beasts so lynx reducing their numbers might be a good thing

Um, then why are there 22.5 mil sheep in the UK for just 67mil people? Contrast this to 5.2 mil sheep in the US for 330 mil people. It must be at least marginally profitable for so many sheep to be raised in the UK (or are agriculture subsidies really that large and widespread in the UK?)

Yes. farming subsidies are huge. 55% of farming income is derived from the CAP (pre-brexit) and the UK is a net importer of sheep meat.

Lamb is not popular in the US. It's a speciality meat. Lamb is common across europe.

Also: Australia: 75m sheep for 25m people Also: New Zealand: 25m sheep for 5m people

This quote:

A sheep farmer from North York Moors national park in northern England, who owns about 700 sheep over 1,250 acres, makes around £12,000 profit in a good year, and even this small income would be impossible without subsidies worth about £44,000 from the EU Common Agricultural Policy.

https://www.surgeactivism.org/articles/uk-farming-subsidies-...

UK is a net exported of lamb (or was prior to Brexit) - https://ahdb.org.uk/news/uk-lamb-self-sufficiency-and-impact...

Sheep farming is mainly done on uplands and requires massive subsidies to give farmers a ‘liveable’ income

To my mind it's far better to stop farming sheep and pay the farmers to rewild the hills

Alternatively we could just stop subsidising sheep farmers let them go bust and the hills will rewild themselves

> Sheep farming is pretty uneconomic in the UK

So it makes sense the farmers would be opposed to anything that may eat their tiny profit margins

This is unclear and farmers could find that they were wrong about it. Wouldn't be the first time.

Farmers lose small sheep to foxes. Lynx clean an area of foxes and defend bigger territories. Yes a couple of lynx can kill a lamb here and there, but currently they have yet twelve foxes in the same area trying to do the same all the time and living under the farm basement, so... what option looks better for the farmers? My bet would be "much less foxes and a lynx"

if they were wise, they'd see the lynx-kill as a guaranteed income (albiet possibly below full market rate) and thus, a hedge: I believe most successful re-wildings of predators include compensation, so really, when you think about it, its not a huge loss overall.

Not a very romantic view I agree, if you're staring at a field of dead lambs and mothers, but farmers need to be philosophical these days. A lot of Australian farmers leave the land shortly after having to shoot stock in drought. Is this really worse?

Maybe he could just stick to releasing them on his own land?

> In 2018/2019 it was reported that Povlsen owns 221,000 acres (890 km2; 345 sq mi) of land in Scotland, making him the largest landowner there.

No doubt they will then use it as an excuse to fence the land off and prevent free roaming across it.

Scotland has had 'freedom to roam' laws for something like 15 years. Aside from a few "common sense" exclusions like quarries and airfields, the only real restriction is that roamers act responsibly.

Any other exclusions would need to be passed into law, which is highly unlikely to ever happen.

In practice these rights work well for everyone.

In the debate about reintroducing wolves to Scotland the landowner wanted to fence the land and add it to one of the few "common sense" exclusions.

https://www.nathab.com/blog/bringing-wolves-back-to-scotland...

Thanks for that link - relatively short read, hinting at the multifaceted nature of doing something like this — and it’s not totally obvious what’s selfish and what’s altruistic.

With beavers, the case (aside from joy of re-wilding) was clear regarding their effect on up-stream water retention. Beavers are net beneficial in uplands, preventing flooding, at a cost of marginal land usage loss near the stream due to ponds, and less aggressive but nonetheless pretty wet flooding when beaver dams break.

With predators, I am unsure what the (quasi?)economic argument would be. I think the environment is healthier with a population of top predators. its possible it would stop rampant deer problems, they eat the living bejesus out of young trees. But the young trees in question are mostly monoculture, cropped trees. We're not talking native forest here mostly, the caledonian forest is a tiny percentage of the plantation state of most of scotlands forestry. (or was, I left in the 80s. I am probably out of date here)

A lot of 'beautiful' landscape is totally manufactured, including grouse moors. The de-forestation of britain across the industrial revolution, and then the highland clearances to replace upland small tenant farming with sheep, was about replacing the landscape with .. other landscape. Forestry Commission plantations are a bit soulless, but Edinburgh Universty has been running forestry management degrees since around 1917, and the need for timber in WWI. A lot of "restore nature" is really "put it back the way my grandfather had it" not "put it back to the doggerland days"

I like wolves and lynx and beavers and storks. Lots of tourists like them. I don't know (absent CAP market support to farmers) which is more net beneficial longterm, the destructive farming patterns, or the tourism. Both have up and downsides.

Non-british resident. I could get "what do you know" answers back. They'd be fair.