To investigate what’s really behind the controversy that surrounds large carnivore reintroductions, one political ecologist spoke to people on the frontline of this debate.

Lynx and bears probably disappeared from both islands much earlier, despite debates over the potential presence of lynx in early modern Scottish texts.

In Ireland, the evidence for lynx rests on a single bone from almost 9,000 years ago. But much more recently than this, wolves did not simply vanish from our lands – we got rid of them. We did so less because our ancestors read too many fairy tales, more because of a confluence of political and economic factors.