news, breaking news, latest news, news archives, celebrity news
A Scottish landowner is planning to create a Highlands wildlife reserve stocked with brown bears, wolves, and lynx.
Paul Lister, who has already introduced moose on to his estate, plans to repopulate it with animals not seen in Britain for hundreds of years.
“When you have radical ideas like this, people think you’re a crackpot,” he told the BBC.
“What I’m aiming to do is to create a wilderness and wildlife reserve similar to those that exist in Southern Africa; something that is controlled, managed and fenced.
“It is nothing like Britain or Europe has ever seen before.”
A pair of moose have recently arrived from Sweden and have been settling into a 450 acre enclosure within Mr Lister’s Alladale Estate.
He says there is still much to do before larger predators can be brought in, but believes the reserve could be up and running in two to five years.
He explained: “The main problem we have in Scotland is a complete overpopulation of red deer. We probably have triple or quadruple the number of red deer than we can sustain.
“When I was 20, I was out shooting deer and I started thinking about why we were having to cull so many of them. And the reason was that we got rid of all the predators years ago.
“By bringing large predators back - wolves, lynxes and bears - then we would end up with a more healthy and balanced population of ungulates.”
