Why+do+we+need+large+carnivores

**Why do we need large carnivores?**


====For thousands of years, since humans first began to raise domesticated animals for meat, milk, wool and skins, we have waged war against wolves and other carnivores which inflicted (and continue to inflict) damage on livestock and human lives, so why now, in the twenty-first century, are we trying to bring back those same animals?==== ====The post-ice age European flora and fauna evolved with large predators – wolves, bears, and lynx. Living alongside these large predators were herbivores such as deer, horses, aurochs (wild cattle), wild boar, elk (moose), and European bison.==== ====Around 5-6,000 years ago, humans began to clear forests for fields and settlements, and hunting of both herbivores, for food, and carnivores, as competitors for game and a threat to livestock, intensified. Across Europe, these species were persecuted until only wild boar and the three species of deer – red, roe and fallow – were common, and carnivores were restricted to remote, often mountainous areas by the middle of the twentieth century.==== ====With no natural predators to keep them on the move and prevent over-browsing of one area, deer have contributed to the failure of the natural process of regeneration of woodland by nibbling tree shoots and destroying saplings. Complete exclusion of deer is not necessarily the answer. Our native forests evolved with browsing herbivores keeping the more vigorous under storey plants in check and allowing slower growing plant to compete. Thus, forest biodiversity and productivity benefits from the presence of deer and wild boar, but relies on the presence of predators to prevent overgrazing.====

The presence of large carnivores then, can influence the flora and fauna of an ecosystem and help to keep it in a more natural and diverse state than areas where there are no predators.
====Just how important is wildlife and a natural landscape to people? Before the eighteenth century, wilderness was regarded as something to be conquered and tamed. In the late 1700s, the Romantic poets, writers and painters ushered in a new appreciation of wild places; Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote //“Nature flies from frequented places. It is on the summit of mountains, in the depths of forests, on deserted islands that she reveals her most affecting charms.”// Today, an ever-growing number of people are turning to nature as a sanctuary from the hustle and bustle and pressures of modern life, and the benefits of this are now being backed up by science. An English Nature report published in 2003, titled //Nature and Psychological Wellbeing//, cites research that shows people who have regular encounters with wildlife had better mental health than those who did not. Environmental activist and author Edward Abbey best sums up our sometimes contradictory attitude to wild places and animals; //“Why wilderness? Because we like the taste of freedom. Because we like the smell of danger.”// Without large carnivores, some of that ‘smell of danger’ is lost, and there is a sense that the wilderness is no longer truly wild. That in itself is surely a good reason to conserve what is left before it is all gone.====