The Missing Lynx: The Past and Future of Britain's Lost Mammals

by RossBarnett (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2019

  $9.58

  Big mammals divide opinion. Lynx are just one of a range of beasts that disappeared from Britain since the end of the last ice age and, alongside other megafauna, are plausible candidates for reintroduction. In The Missing Lynx, Ross Barnett uses case studies, new fossil discoveries, biomolecular evidence and more to paint pictures of these extinct species, and to explore the significance of their disappearance in ecological terms. He also discusses how the Britons that these animals shared their home with might have viewed them, and why some survived while others vanished. Barnett also looks in detail and the realistic potential of reintroductions and even of resurrection - topics that capture public interest today. With Beaver now wild again in various parts of Britain and even Great Bustard on Salisbury Plain, what about the return of sabretooths, mammoths and the aurochs to modern ecosystems? Will we ever be able to bring these animals back? And should we? At a time where rewilding is moving from pie-in-the-sky to actual reality, this timely and important book looks from a scientific perspective at the magnificent megafauna we've lost, why we lost it and what happened as a result, and how we might realistically turn the ecological tide.