Alladale updates

Here's a Yale Environment 360 post by Caroline Fraser highlighting the Alladale Reserve and another similar "rewilding" scheme in the Scottish Borders.

I was pleased to read it, since it gave me an update on some issues I follow from time to time in Scottish conservation.

Regular readers will remember our fact-finding mission to Alladale three years ago. There's a string of posts on this blog.

The Alladale project, owned and led by millionaire Paul Lister, is attempting to reintroduce various Highland fauna, but particularly moose right now, later wolves and bear.

I have to say, I think the community organization model used at Caroline's other featured site, Carrifran Wildwood, will outlast Paul Lister's commercial one.

Lister, as we discovered once we met and talked with the guy, is not particularly interested in the Scottish communities that surround him. Aimee and I and the other Unity College researchers that visited saw this at first hand. He's also disrespectful of the Scottish hillwalking and mountaineering fraternity.

But like all Scottish landowners he does not control access, nor does he have a right to do so, so this lack of respect, which has led to an inability to communicate with both locals and walkers, has led to difficulties with his scheme.

While the Carrifran scheme, which serves similar goals, appears to have generated wide participation and admiration.

My grandfather, the Kinder Trespasser, would have approved of this scheme, whilst Listers would have been seen as yet another moneyed theft of the people's birthright.

There's little doubt that most Scottish people see the Alladale scheme like this too. Fraser outlines the issues. Lister has a major PR problem on his hands and it will prevent him from succeeding with his goals.

The other difference with the two schemes is that the Carrifran scheme is concentrating on natural flora before fauna. Lister is fairly distracted by his lack of competence in biology, which has led him to concentrate on higher levels of the trophic web than may perhaps be viable, restoring or seeking to restore various charismatic megafauna before the food systems that support them are restored.

This last point is arguable, since the major problem with primary producers in this food web is overgrazing by red deer (Cervus elaphus), which might be reduced if one of his predators, the wolf, were successfully introduced. This is the best argument Lister has. But current law will require him to fence the entire reserve and run it as a zoo before he gets his wolves.

It would make a lot more sense to me, ecologically and in terms of public relations, to concentrate on restoring the native pine and other remnants of Caledonian forest first, engaging the community in plantings and visits as they have done at Carrifran.

Trouble is, no-one will pay to see this, which negates the commercial "safari park" approach that Lister seeks to demonstrate.

And Lister definitely lacks the patience to get on a slower plan to rewilding.