There is something about walking in the woods which stirs something old in me. My senses go into overdrive listening for every rustle and peering for any movement.
But for a few hundred years the forests have been empty of top predators. There are no big, bad wolves, or scary bears. The woods miss them though. The deer population increases without the wolves and lynxes so they eat more saplings so no young trees replace the ones which die. Without these species which evolved to be part of these islands it will be incomplete.
There are plans for lynx to be reintroduced. These forest cats stick to densely wooded areas and mainly prey on deer but rarely will take sheep. Farmers who have their sheep taken will be compensated. Lynxes have never been recorded attacking people.
I hope one day I can wander a forest full of new growth and whenever I hear a rustle I can imagine it may have been a lynx.
