Call of the wild
One Highlands estate is to become a wilderness reserve, writes Lisa Marie Johnson
I’ve recently found myself musing on why, in this age of luxury linens and 24-hour room service, an increasing number of lifestyle initiatives are so keen to reacquaint us with our wild side. There was Channel 4’s The Wild Gourmets, which saw Guy Grieve and Thomasina Miers roasting venison in a force 12 gale; and Punk Publishing’s Wild Swimming, for which photographer Daniel Start went skinny-dipping in icy lakes. And now Wildfitness is exhorting us to rediscover the beast within by running barefoot through the ‘urban jungle’ of Regent’s Park. So I was intrigued to be invited to Alladale, where MFI heir Paul Lister wants to reintroduce wolves to Scotland.
Actually, what Lister wants to do is ‘rewild’ his 23,000 acres of the Highlands, regenerating the wilderness that was there before the trees were cut down to make way for sheep and the sheep were shooed out to create the hunting, shooting and fishing estates of today. In Lister’s vision, a denuded landscape overpopulated by deer will be replaced by forests of Caledonian pine, birch, rowan, aspen, alder and holly, supporting a similarly diverse range of fauna from lynx, bears and wolves to moose, wild boar and red squirrels. A ‘controlled release of wolves’ is part of this vision.
Why Lister should want to rewild Alladale is easily explained. ‘Stalking has turned deer into a dominant species that is detrimental to the landscape,’ he says. ‘And to cover your costs you have to diversify your activities. A wilderness reserve would be both sustainable and a huge attraction — there haven’t been wolves in Scotland for 300 years. It would also get people to think about other species. It ticks all the boxes: economics, ecology, the environment, education and employment.’
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Jon Foote
November 13th, 2008 8:23pmThank you, Lisa Marie Johnson, for labelling me and others in such a derogatory fashion as "the Right to Roam brigade". Perhaps you don't know, and perhaps Mr Lister neglected to mention, that the law of Scotland does not permit Mr Lister to exclude us from the land by building a huge fence. His whole plan appears to depend on charging people for access, which is illegal in Scotland. He will have to get a derogation from this, as well as planning permission for the fence, which is unlikely to be granted.
Mr Lister's publicity machine is impressive, but it is disappointing that a so-called journalist can be so uncritical about a very controversial scheme. The Land Reform Act is not the only piece of "red tape" as Mr Lister calls it that he will come up against.