Reintroducing elk can help restore England’s natural balance

After a 3,000 year hiatus, the mighty elk could soon return to England. Plans to reintroduce this towering creature were announced last week, as part of a growing movement to bring back lost species and help restore our natural ecosystems. But the uncomfortable truth is that restoration doesn’t just mean bringing certain animals back, but taking some away.

Kitty Thompson | CEN's Senior Nature Programme Manager

Free to wallow, trample, graze, and knock down trees to create clearings, elk would reshape the small corner of England we give them for the better. Like beavers building dams or lynx hunting their prey, elk are a keystone species. They are critical for maintaining the balance and biodiversity of their wetland ecosystem and will help to reverse our fortunes as one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries. 

Britain has lost many of its keystone creatures and, with them, much of the natural order that once kept our ecosystems in check. Valiant projects to bring back native species should be commended. But they cannot be a distraction from the vital, albeit less exciting, efforts to deal with the animals that are already in our landscape, nibbling away at our efforts to recover British nature. 

From the Highlands to the Home Counties, other species of deer, like the native roe and red or the invasive sika and muntjac, are running rampant through our countryside in numbers unseen since the Norman Conquest. They are causing misery for farmers and foresters alike, trampling crops, feasting on saplings, and colliding with vehicles on our roads.

The insatiable appetite of our ballooning deer population means that our woodlands are no longer able to regenerate naturally and the forest understory is left barren. Efforts to proactively plant more trees are often done in vain when deer are around, since tree guards are not an insurmountable obstacle for these doe-eyed destroyers. 

The real issue is not the presence of deer per se. It is the lack of ecological balance that once kept them in check. England is currently without any natural predators, like wolves and lynx, to control this population. If we do not put this responsibility back into the paws of natural, native predators, we must reach for our rifles instead. 

Nature, once self-sustaining, now depends on constant – and costly – human intervention, like taxpayer-funded culling. Erecting more deer-proof fencing, putting wild venison back on the menu, and making it easier to process and sell this meat would all help. But these solutions only go so far. 

Humans can’t replicate the fear deer feel when real predators are present, or the pressure they face competing with bigger herbivores, like elk, for food, water, and space. These natural forces once kept deer populations in check. Their absence helps to explain why today’s deer problem persists.

That is why greater ecological balance must be the underlying objective guiding our national effort to restore nature. We must be honest about the limitations of human efforts. Replacing our landscape’s main characters with ourselves has meant we are consistently failing to meet our goal. 

The real solution lies in giving nature the space and freedom to do its thing. Sometimes, this means deer-proofing the parameters of our woodlands and spending taxpayer money to cull deer and plant trees. We must also consider bringing back the natural forces that kept balance in the first place.  

This is where native species reintroductions can come in. Reintroducing them is not about novelty or an appeal to our nation’s love of animals, importing exotic species for fellow Britons to ogle, but a pragmatic way of reinstating ecological balance. Animals like the elk were once an integral part of our landscape and the impact of their absence cannot be ignored.

Handing some responsibility back to keystone species can break the cycle of overpromising and underdelivering on our desire to recover British nature. They will do the heavy lifting for us, saving precious time and money and create a more abundant natural environment for the next generation.

Ecological balance cannot be restored by man alone. If we continue to pretend it can, ballooning deer populations will continue to prove us wrong. We need to give nature the space and freedom to recover, bringing back the forces that first maintained this balance. Recovery starts not with a small acorn but with a mighty elk.

First published by The Spectator. Kitty Thompson is CEN's Head of Campaigns.