HANNAH L. TIMMINS
· In early January 2025, four lynx, extinct in the UK, were found loose in the Scottish highlands. Was this an act of guerrilla rewilding – the illegal release of wild animals to reintroduce a lost species?
· Police are also considering the prospect of the animals being dumped by an owner struggling with an illicit collection of exotic animals, as a way of rehoming them at Highland Wildlife Park. Whatever the context for this event, it has highlighted the messy issues that come with illegally released species, including rogue reintroductions.
· Guerrilla rewilding is highly controversial with opponents concerned about animal welfare and its potential to frustrate legitimate rewilding work
· Illegal releases are an example of civil disobedience that could prompt, and in the past have prompted, policy change expediting rewilding
· Guerrilla rewilders appear to have access to significant resources, under the right circumstances their plans could succeed
· Guerrilla rewilding growing more frequent and more ambitious, is a strong signal of discontent with the pace of conservation and nature restoration
Four ghost cats appear
At 16:20 on Wednesday 8 January, 2025, two lynx were spotted in the Drumguish area, near Kingussie, Scotland. Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) have been absent from the UK since hunting and habitat loss drove them to extinction around 1,000 years ago. The two cats were captured on Thursday by staff of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS). On Friday at 07:10 two more lynx were spotted, again not far from Kingussie, in the Cairngorms National Park. Again, RZSS staff swiftly and carefully captured the animals by baiting a series of humane traps to entice them.
Videos show them padding gingerly out of the woods, their steps muffled by the snow on a severely cold night. Their big paws and thick fur perfectly adapted to the environment. Yet they seem out of place: they are tentative and clearly desensitized to people.
The sudden appearance of four lynx in Scotland has shocked rewilding advocates and opponents alike. This species is at the heart of current efforts to rewild the UK; the Lynx to Scotland project is working to secure the return of lynx to the Scottish Highlands. A low threat level to people, lack of cultural bias against them, their potential for curbing Britain’s exploding deer population and a strong accumulated expertise of reintroductions has led the lynx to be nominated as the first reintroduction in Britain’s predator guild. It would be the first large carnivore restored to the country, and given that the UK is an island, unlike mainland Europe, there is no way for lynx to return without active translocation.
The same was true for the beaver – until so-called guerrilla rewilders re-beavered England and Scotland’s waterways through a series of unauthorised releases.
Lessons from beaver rewilding
Illicit releases of beavers in Scotland and England (along with Belgium) provide an excellent example of policy following action: the results of the beaver releases were impossible to regulate or enforce against and so the previously unauthorised releases were sanctioned. The beavers acted as unofficial experiments, providing a proof of concept and generating tolerance and even love of the species. This led to a de facto sanctioning of the releases, opening the floodgates for population expansion.
As an ecologist interested in the phenomenon of rogue, guerrilla, covert or rebel rewilding, as it is variously known, I have been predicting for some time that we would eventually have to contend with an illegal release of a large carnivore in the UK. Whilst it is still possible that this is an irresponsible pet dumping, many now believe that the four Kingussie lynx were likely released by frustrated activists, hoping to establish a lynx population using animals from a private reserve. Albeit with devastatingly different results.
While initially the lynx were all thought to be in good condition, RZSS soon reported signs of starvation. Police have said that the cats were so hungry they could virtually be hand-fed and by Saturday one had died. They were initially found close to some straw bedding left beside a layby and seemed to have been dumped with a few dead chicks presumably for food. It now seems likely that these were tame animals, familiar-with and reliant-on humans for survival. It is unclear how long they were fending for themselves in the Cairngorms or whether they had been looked after well prior to their release. In short, the selection of these individuals for any kind of a wild release was entirely misguided.
The response from conservation organisations
Conservation organisations – many of which have been working diligently to bring the lynx back to the UK – have largely condemned the lynx-releasers. The Lynx to Scotland project was started in 2021 by a group of charities, including RZSS and Scotland: The Big Picture. Of these organisations, David Field, the chief executive of RZSS, called the releases “Irresponsible and wrong“, adding “Whatever it was, it was crazy, it was irresponsible and it should never, ever have been done.” Peter Cairns, director of Scotland: The Big Picture, agreed that illegal releases “are simply counter-productive”. The Mammal Society put out a more sympathetic statement, saying that it understood the “frustration” which could lead to illegal releases, but that there were “no shortcuts” to achieving species restorations.
I am cherry-picking here and I know for a fact that these groups have conflicted and nuanced views on illegal releases. I also share the concerns of my rewilding colleagues. But I question whether rogue releases are always doomed to fail and whether we might consider a more delicate response when they occur.
What could have happened had it worked out?
Imagine for a moment that the releases had turned out another way. Imagine that the releasers had found a number of healthy, unrelated, wild lynx. That somehow they had smuggled them across France and the channel, driven them up the length of the UK, deep into the heart of the Cairngorms, the country’s largest protected area, and released them with a few deer carcasses to give them a good head start. Could it have worked?
We know from feasibility modelling studies that there are more than enough roe deer and smaller game in the Cairngorms to feed a sustainable population of lynx. The area has exactly the right kind of habitat; good forest cover and lots of food.
Guerrilla releases like these are not a new phenomenon. It’s safe to say that people have been moving wild animals around for a long time. I’m sure many people reading this will remember mucking around with frogspawn when they were kids, moving them from river to pond and back. I’ve been collecting documented evidence of covert releases of butterflies, barn owls, pole cats, pine marten, boar and perhaps the most famous; beavers, for a few years now.
But the further up the food chain you go, the bigger the animals get, the fussier too. It is one thing to slosh a bucket of frogspawn a few kilometres and quite another to safely capture wild lynx and manoeuvre them over 2,000 km across borders and a sea, deep into a snowy, mountainous park and, again safely, and successfully, release them.
Then the animals have to survive. They have to find prey, hunt and kill it, shelter from bad weather, avoid people, avoid camera traps, leave little to no trace, and eventually find one another again and reproduce.
Mission Impossible, maybe. But theoretically it could be done. And in three, four, five-years’ time, maybe someone picks up what looks like the end of a tufted ear on a camera trap, or spots a print in the snow too big to be a wildcat. Maybe people notice that there are fewer car collisions with deer, or farmers are losing less each year to deer crop damage.
Michael Bode’s research models theoretical populations of Tasmanian devils on mainland Australia where they have been extinct for a few thousand years. He asks the question “if one were to release a population of devils into this landscape, how long could they exist under the radar of people?” He has found that multiple groups of devils could survive in the Australian Alps for years without being detected. By which time the populations would have grown too large to eradicate. It is also worth mentioning here the persistent rumours and some DNA results which suggest that a big cat population may already be breeding in Britain’s countryside. Rick Minter has been compiling evidence and testimonials of big cat encounters for some time now.
What would happen if a similar secret lynx population were to survive and reproduce in the UK? Would we round up the lynx, securing them in captivity or translocating them to the Alps? More likely, we would have to let the public decide.
After a decade of beaver rumours in Devon, the species was first confirmed on the River Otter in 2014. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) first plan of action was to trap and move them to a zoo. This prompted a massive public outcry, a petition to save the beavers that registered over 13,000 signatures and activists patrolling the river banks ready to block any attempt to remove the beavers. Eventually, this unofficial experiment was authorised – the beavers were allowed to stay!
Could an illicit, charismatic lynx generate similar public support and protection on a return to their ancestral homeland? Could an elusive and secretive population of these cats, keeping to themselves for a few years in the mountains, provide a proof of concept that we can live in coexistence with the species in the UK? If the answers were yes, would we sanction the lynx like we did the River Otter beavers?
Rogue rewilders have resources
The circumstances of the lynx releases – who did it, why, how, where were the lynx taken from, were they wild in any way – are not yet fully known. Suffice to say the releasers were not following best practices for reintroducing species.
Yet, they still managed to get hold of four Eurasian lynx in the UK and risk serious legal consequences for releasing them, suggesting they may have some connections and financing. Were they are likely desperate to see wild lynx back in Scotland.
If rogue rewilders have financial resources and connections to secure and move wild lynx, there is nothing per se preventing them from following (the majority of) reintroduction best practices. I say “the majority of” precisely because best practices for species restorations also include full public consultation and laying the preparatory grounds to promote tolerance and coexistence – the important and democratic work that the Lynx to Scotland project is doing right now.
Rogue rewilders are desperate and frustrated
The act of illegally releasing wild species in the UK is punishable by up to five years in prison, an unlimited fine, or both. What does it tell us that people are willing to make such heavy financial investments and take such huge legal risks to bring back lynx? They are desperate and frustrated by the slow pace of species restorations.
UK nature is impoverished. According to the Biodiversity Intactness Index (the BII), the UK falls in the bottom 10% of countries worldwide. And the decision-making power to reverse this, to restore nature in the UK, rests with public servants in regulatory agencies like Defra, who are generally incentivised to be risk-averse. The vast majority of rewilding proposals are denied, often in order to prevent human-wildlife conflict or, paradoxically, to protect other vulnerable species.
Environmentalist Ben Goldsmith has also highlighted the hypocrisy of blocking and criticizing native fauna restorations whilst releasing 50 million non-native pheasants onto the British landscape each year unchecked. I’d add to this, the nonsensical ease of nipping to a local plant nursery to buy rhododendrons, a devastatingly invasive species in the UK with virtually no restrictions. Or how easy it is to buy and own a dangerous dog that could cause one of the 9,000 hospitalizations of people from dog attacks each year.
Over 80% of the British public want to see extinct species returned and 45% were in favour of restoring lynx. The slow pace of restoration and our slide into further nature depletion may be leading members of the public to take more drastic action. Governments and rewilding organisations should pay close attention to illegal releases: they are a serious indicator of discontent.
Best practices for species reintroductions also call for identifying key stakeholder groups and areas of potential conflict. This usually means farmers – livestock farmers in particular with predators – but perhaps guerrilla rewilders should also feature as a key stakeholder group. We need to do a better job of working with anonymous covert rewilding groups and individuals to better understand their drivers and goals. They will be of more support inside the tent than outside.
This is delicate. As conservation practitioners, for most of us our natural habitat is ecology, taking a leap into stakeholder consultations and community-wildlife coexistence is an act that required bravery. Scarier still, is the very messy world of civil disobedience. When is it right for us to give an opinion on the pace of legislative changes in a democratic country? These are ethical questions, often with no clear answers.
Of course, the release of practically tame lynx with no hunting skills onto a snowy mountainside with nothing but a few dead chicks to see them through the winter was irresponsible and reckless. But isn’t this just us ecologists veering neatly back into the safer space of animal welfare?
The January 2025 Scotland lynx release case raises many awkward matters for debate across the fields of nature conservation, countryside management and animal welfare. But one of the conclusions is simple and clear: we need an informed conversation about guerrilla rewilding and what this growing phenomenon means.
Hannah Timmins is a consultant ecologist with Equilibrium Research. She is preparing a book on rogue reintroductions and the consequences for mainstream nature conservation and rewilding. han@equilibriumresearch.com