Lynx UK reintroduction: The benefits and challenges of returning carnivores to the British Isles

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth.

Over the past 1,000 years, the UK has been transformed as people have cleared its forests, drained its bogs and concreted over its meadows. As a result, a wide variety of mammals, birds, plants, insects and many other species have become extinct.

While some of these species, such as the great auk and aurochs, are gone forever, others can still be found in mainland Europe. This has allowed animals including Eurasian beavers, white-tailed eagles and large blue butterflies to be reintroduced to the UK thanks to the efforts of dedicated conservationists, researchers and members of the public.

Predatory mammals, however, are yet to make their return. Wolves, brown bears and lynx would once have been a relatively common sight in the British Isles but were driven to extinction hundreds of years ago. Without these predators, natural ecosystems have struggled to function.

Calls for the return of these carnivores have grown in recent years, with the lynx seen as the most likely option. However, political opposition and concerns over the potential impact on livestock mean that these species reintroduction plans have stalled.

The UK’s lost carnivores

During the last Ice Age, the UK was home to many large carnivores. Cave lions and hyenas were among the animals that stalked the landscape and would have been a familiar sight to ancient humans.

These carnivores, however, disappeared thousands of years ago as part of a global series of extinctions. It’s not exactly clear what caused these animals to be wiped out, but a changing climate, human hunting or a combination of the two have all been blamed.

While some people advocate restoring the British Isles to its Ice Age state, it’s not a widely held view. Ben Town, our UK Nature Recovery Coordinator, says that it’s unlikely that it would work.

“Though some of the animals that lived in the UK during the last Ice Age, such as the Arctic fox, are still found elsewhere, reintroducing them after thousands of years would be very challenging,” Ben explains. “There’s a big risk that these animals just wouldn’t survive here anymore, as the environment they lived in just doesn’t exist in the present day.”

“Reintroducing species from the last Ice Age could also impact the modern plants and animals that live here, and the consequences could be hard to predict.”

Instead, carnivore reintroductions have so far focused on species that went extinct in the British Isles since the last Ice Age. The ecosystems that these predators were a part of largely still exist, with these animals instead dying out because humans hunted them and destroyed their habitats.

“Carnivores have been persecuted in the UK for thousands of years,” Ben says. “The hunting of large predators such as the wolf really increased from the Middle Ages onwards as farms and urban areas grew, bringing people and carnivores into conflict.”

“It shows there’s been a long history of people in the UK seeing these animals only as a threat. But predators are a vital part of healthy ecosystems, so the country is missing out on the benefits they can bring.”

What is a keystone species?

Animals, plants or any other forms of life that have a disproportionately large impact on their ecosystem come under the keystone species definition. Even small numbers of keystone species can cause a phenomenon known as a trophic cascade, where their actions affect the lives of other species.

Beavers, for example, are a keystone species. By removing trees, they allow light into the forest. In turn this encourages plants that dislike shade to grow. They also build dams that create new wetland habitats, which support a variety of amphibians, invertebrates and other groups.

The most widely known keystone species are the top predators, also known as apex predators. The lion, the great white shark and the bald eagle are all apex predator examples that hunt prey and by doing so help to control their ecosystems.

When keystone species disappear, the ecosystem changes a lot. The loss of the UK’s predators, for example, has had serious consequences with prey populations having grown out of control as a result.

“Deer populations have become much larger in the UK since the loss of carnivores,” Ben explains. “As a result, large parts of the countryside are now suffering from overgrazing. In turn, this leads to soil erosion, as there aren’t sufficient root systems to hold the dirt together.”

“Trees also can’t establish, as they’re eaten by deer as saplings, which has all kinds of knock-on effects. If woodlands can’t restore themselves, then the animals that live in these habitats won’t come back either.”

Apex predators also create what’s known as ‘a landscape of fear’, where the threat of being eaten keeps prey on the move. Without it, prey populations are more likely to stay in one place, destroying the plants that live there.

This overgrazing by deer and other herbivores has held back the recovery of woodlands, peatlands and heathlands across the British Isles. In the face of the ongoing biodiversity crisis, reintroducing the UK’s missing predators could bring these prey populations under control – with the lynx considered as the best first step.

Should the lynx be reintroduced in the UK?

The lynx is generally considered the most likely carnivore for reintroduction in the UK. Compared to animals like the wolf or the brown bear, it’s smaller, needs less habitat and isn’t considered a danger to people.

Not only would reintroducing the lynx help control prey populations and restore ecosystem functions, it would also have additional benefits due to its behaviour. The tendency of lynx to only eat part of an animal’s carcass means it provides food for scavengers and small predators.

Despite these benefits, the debate over whether lynx should be reintroduced has continued for decades. Roy Dennis is a conservationist who’s been involved in the reintroduction of beavers and birds of prey to the UK and is an advocate for lynx to return.

“I once had the privilege of briefly seeing a wild lynx in Europe before it disappeared into the bushes,” says Roy. “Looking at the woodlands of Scotland and northern England, I know it would do extremely well here.”

“However, it’s not just a matter of lynx biology – it’s also about the social and political issues that surround it.”

One of the main concerns about reintroducing lynx is around the possible effect on livestock. While cows and horses are too large for lynx to hunt, some farmers are concerned that their sheep could be killed by them.

“While lynx spend most of their time in forests and don’t like open areas, it’s possible that they might occasionally take the odd sheep,” Roy explains. “We need to be upfront about this risk and put compensation schemes and countermeasures in place from the very beginning.”

“It’s by getting across this expertise to landowners, farmers, foresters and everyone else that we can start to gain acceptance for lynx reintroductions in the local community. That’s what makes the difference between whether a project gets done or not.”

Reintroducing the lynx also faces a more psychological barrier in the UK than it does elsewhere in Europe. While countries such as Italy are used to the presence of bears and wolves, there haven’t been any large carnivores in the British Isles for hundreds of years.

“As larger predators have been gone from the UK for so long, people don’t see them as something they can live peacefully alongside,” says Ben. “It’s a completely different culture to nations in mainland Europe, where these animals never totally went away.”

Where would a UK lynx reintroduction happen?

Currently, an application for a lynx reintroduction has only ever been made for one site in the UK – the Kielder Forest in Northumberland.

England’s largest forest was chosen by Lynx Trust UK for a proposed reintroduction in 2015 based on the size of its habitat and deer populations. The plans, however, were rejected by Natural England in 2018 over concerns about a lack of detail in the project.

While there are hopes to resurrect these proposals for England in the future, Scottish woodlands also have the potential to support the return of the lynx. There is ample habitat for the lynx in Scotland because tree cover has more than tripled across Scotland in the past century due to tree plantations.

Finding the right site, however, is just the first stage in a long process of bringing lynx back to the UK. While most animal reintroductions normally plan with a 30-year-long timescale in mind, it might take as long as a century for predators.

“Large carnivores take longer to reintroduce because they’re slow at reproducing,” Ben explains. “This means it will take a lot of detailed planning and support to get their populations to a point where they’re stable without our intervention.”

“These plans have to consider everything from the ethics of reintroduction to how the animals will be looked after and monitored in the long term. It’s been a long time since lynx were in the UK, so there’s a lot that has to be considered to make any reintroduction a success.”

How likely is a lynx reintroduction in the UK?

Until recently, the chances of a lynx reintroduction to the UK in the near future were considered quite likely. Scotland and England introduced reintroduction codes in 2014 and 2021 respectively, which set out the guidelines for how animals can be brought back to the British Isles.

In 2023 the idea of a lynx reintroduction was dismissed by then-Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey, but subsequent shifts in public opinion and politics were believed to mean that the UK was on the brink of approving a trial. Then everything changed.

In January 2025, four lynx were captured in the Cairngorms National Park, Scotland, after being released without permission. The animals weren’t used to living in the wild and were showing signs of starvation when they were caught. One later died from the ordeal.

While it’s unknown who was responsible, this rogue rewilding hardened attitudes against lynx reintroduction, with Scottish First Minister John Swinney ruling out reintroductions for the remainder of his term.

The release of these lynx frustrated conservationists who’d been working on a planned reintroduction for decades.

“The rogue rewilding incident was extraordinarily sad and ill advised,” says Roy. “Those animals were totally incapable of looking after themselves in the wild, and it’s really set back the clock on a lynx reintroduction.”

“That it happened at all is a reflection of the fact that, as a country, we haven’t got on with an official reintroduction. If the lynx had been brought back 10 or 20 years ago, people wouldn’t be taking matters into their own hands.”

“Nonetheless, in an appalling era of biodiversity collapse and climate breakdown, we have to move faster and bigger with species recovery. There are skilled workers who can do these things successfully, but they’re being held up by red tape and bureaucracy.”

While plans for the lynx are on hold, Ben says that it’s likely that reintroduction projects will focus on species that already live in the UK in small numbers, such as the white stork and the pine marten. These projects have fewer hurdles to overcome and can set an example for more ambitious reintroduction projects.

Eventually, despite the setbacks, Ben believes that the lynx will end up returning to the UK “in the near future”.

“Public sentiment on the lynx has been shifting in the past 20 years,” Ben says. “The building passion for restoring nature has seen people change their minds about having large carnivores living alongside them.”

“Public support is what drives reintroduction projects and increases the chances of them happening. Ultimately, I think this will make the idea of lynx returning to the UK a reality.”