Derek Gow (Chelsea Green)
EVER since 1995, when he got hold of his first water voles, Derek Gow has been plugging away with species reintroductions. He has released thousands of voles, along with dozens of beavers, all raised on the farm he has rewilded for decades in Devon, UK. Future plans include storks 鈥� white and black 鈥� and wild cats. Sceptical of official channels, and acutely aware of the paucity of the environment around us, he has decided to simply get on with it.
In his book Hunt for the Shadow Wolf: The lost history of wolves in Britain and the myths and stories that surround them, Gow tackles one of the toughest rewilding cases.
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There are plenty of last wolf stories in Britain, many based more on myth and confusion than on fact. But the real history Gow lays bare from archives, museums and parish records is a past that seems predicated on hatred. He tells of hunting parties and bounties that drove wolves to extinction. He finds evidence for the poisons and pits used against them; for bait containing sprung steel that ruptured their guts; and reports of wolves that had their mouths sewn shut or that were hamstrung before being set upon by hounds.
Gow believes that wolves survived in Britain 鈥渨ell into the eighteenth century鈥�. This means there are plenty of trees alive today that would have been used as wolf scratching posts in their youth.
Britain was shaped by wolves. In Penrith, Gow visits an ancient stone enclosure built to shelter shepherds and their flocks at night. In a museum in Wales, he finds three wolf paws nailed to a board. On Sutherland鈥檚 coast, he sees towers used as cemeteries so wolves wouldn鈥檛 disinter the dead. As he picks through place names 鈥� Wolfhole, Wolfpits Farm, Wolf Crag, Howl Moor, Whelphill 鈥� they feel close enough to touch.
Protected by European Union law and aided by the millions of people leaving the country for towns and cities, wolves have now recolonised every country in mainland Europe under their own steam. But islands are a different proposition, and short of swimming the English Channel (no wolf has yet been recorded swimming further than 11 kilometres), reintroducing them here will take more persuasion.
Until Brexit, the UK was bound by the EU鈥檚 Habitats Directive to consider the reintroduction of extirpated species. Today, the public furore in Britain over rewilding the beaver or sea eagle seems to suggest the return of the wolf is a long way off.
A farmer before he became a rewilder, Gow continues to work with livestock. As such, he bridges the gulf between conservationists and farmers better than most. Once, we killed our wolves to protect our sheep, but Gow doesn鈥檛 believe that sheep have much of a future in Britain, propped up by subsidies as they are. He is bold, opinionated and a little eccentric, but the case he makes for the wolf doesn鈥檛 seem eccentric at all. In showing how the history of Britain is entwined with that of wolves, what comes to seem unusual is their absence.
Many species will probably be reintroduced before the wolf, but wolves are important because they are among the most emotive of animals. They make us think about the violence we have inflicted on the natural world 鈥� and the possibility of doing something differently. In setting out the evidence for our long and terrible relationship with wolves, Gow鈥檚 book goes some way towards creating a space for them again.
Adam Weymouth is a writer based on聽the south-east coast of England
