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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

The last wolf in the UK was shot centuries ago, but now a "rewilding" process could see them return to Scotland [bbc.com]. Adam Weymouth hiked across the Scottish Highlands in the footsteps of this lost species.

In Glen Feshie there stand Scots Pines more than 300 years old, and in their youth they may have been marked by wolves. It is beguiling to think that now, camped beneath them, boiling up water for morning coffee.

Last year I walked 200 miles across the Highlands to see how those that lived there would feel about the reintroduction of the wolf. The wolf's population has quadrupled in Europe since 1970, and the fact that they remain extinct in Britain is increasingly anomalous.

With the return of the beaver, the success of the wild cat, a growing call for the return of the lynx, as well as an EU directive obliging governments to consider the reintroduction of extinct species, could it be time for the wolf's return? David Attenborough thinks so. Yet 250 years since their eradication, the animal is still capable of inciting powerful feelings.

Taming Nature has been one of mankind's enduring quests. As a boy I was taught to fear and respect Nature as a member of a species at a disadvantage. Do we really want to go back?

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