Rewilding with big beasts 'could help' UK nature

Reintroducing wild animals to parts of the UK could help restore our environment to a more natural state, a new report suggests.

Large animals like hippos, rhinos and the straight-tusk elephant all once lived in the UK but have disappeared.

Researchers think bringing back such bigger beasts could help aid recovery.

"Looking at which species are missing can help us understand which natural processes are not functioning," said Dr Chris Sandom from Oxford University.

Dr Sandom, who worked on the study, continued: "We propose the process of rewilding to help restore natural processes, like predation and pollination by insects."

Lions used to roam the UK

Today in the UK we still have some larger herbivores but few big predators like lions.

Dr Sandom said: "In Britain today we have many medium sized herbivores like the red deer.

"In some places they're seen as a problem because they eat saplings, which prevents the regeneration of woodlands.

"Reintroducing predators like the lynx or wolf might be appropriate in some areas," he said.

Rewilding has been tried before

It's an idea that has already been tried on a smaller scale - animals like beavers and sea eagles have already been reintroduced in parts of Britain.

But this study doesn't mean we'll have rhino roaming our countryside any time soon.

The scientists studied beetle remains and found there were a lot more dung beetles in Europe 120,000 years ago.

That suggests there were many more large herbivores roaming Europe before humans arrived.

After humans arrived in the UK woodland beetles were much more common, which suggests the big herbivores had gone.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Badger culls were 'ineffective and failed humaneness test'

By Pallab GhosScience correspondent, BBC News

An independent scientific assessment of last year's pilot badger culls in parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset has concluded that they were not effective.

The BBC's Pallab Ghosh reports on both sides of the cull row

Analysis commissioned by the government found the number of badgers killed fell well short of the target deemed necessary, the BBC understands.

And up to 18% of culled badgers took longer than five minutes to die, failing the test for humaneness.

The pilot culls were intended to limit the spread of TB in cattle.

They were carried out to demonstrate the ability to combat bovine TB though a controlled reduction in the population of local badgers.

Contracted marksmen, paid for by farming groups, were employed to shoot the animals at night.

The Independent Expert Panel was appointed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to help ministers evaluate the effectiveness, humaneness and safety of the Gloucestershire and Somerset pilots.

Prof Rosie Woodroffe, a scientist at the Zoological Society of London, said that the panel's "findings show unequivocally that the culls were not effective and that they failed to meet the humaneness criteria.

"I hope this will lead to the Secretary of State (Owen Paterson) to focus on other ways of eradicating TB in cattle," she told BBC News.

Robin Hargreaves, president of the British Veterinary Association (BVA), said it was the BVA that had taken a lead in calling for the controlled shooting to be tested and critically evaluated before it was rolled out.

"We are unable to comment in detail on the findings of the IEP until we have seen the report," he told the BBC. "But if these figures are true then they would certainly raise concerns about both the humaneness and efficacy of controlled shooting.

"We have always stated that if the pilots were to fail on humaneness then BVA could not support the wider roll out of the method of controlled shooting."

The pilots were authorised by Defra and licensed by Natural England.

From BBC News-Sci/ Environment