by Tim Flannery
The ecologies of wolves and dogs have diverged in interesting ways. Wolves eat deer and other large prey, but after millennia scavenging around our campsites, dogs have learned to eat almost anything, and will kill anything from mice to wisent, with free-ranging dogs forming packs to hunt large mammals. But while hungry dogs may evoke our sympathy, we are more likely to shoot a hungry wolf.
Wolves and dogs can mate and produce fertile offspring. Indeed, they have been hybridising for a very long time, as is evidenced by the laika, a wolf-like dog that even today accompanies various Siberian peoples.1 Wildlife managers often try to eliminate dog–wolf hybrids, because they fear that hybrids will eventually replace the wolves. But more thought may be needed on this issue. Hybrids are such an important part of European evolution that an argument could be mounted that a hybrid species is more appropriate to a continent so profoundly modified by people. Such hybrids may in any case be a natural evolutionary outcome of wolves living close to humans. Should we accept them as long as they fulfil the same ecological functions of the true wild wolves? The moral question as to whether we Homo sapiens–H. stupidus hybrids should allow feral Canis lupus familiaris and Canis lupus lupus to hybridise is complex, to say the least. In trying to control evolution by preventing hybridisation, we may be acting in potentially dangerous and destabilising ways.
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In 2004, an Italian brown bear wandered into Germany. JJ1, or Bruno, as he became known, was the first brown bear seen in Germany since 1838. In a country whose capital has a bear on its city seal, you might think that the return of the creature would be celebrated. But on 26 June 2006, just two years after his arrival, Bruno was stalked and shot dead—on Rotwand Mountain in Bavaria. Many Germans were, in fact, delighted by the return of the brown bear, but Bruno came from a problem family. His sad story began years earlier, when ten Slovenian bears were released in the central Italian Alps. Among them were JJ1’s parents, Jurka and Joze.
It appears that Bruno’s mother Jurka was something of a throwback to her carnivorous ancestors of thousands of years ago, and her meat lust was inherited by her offspring. By the time of Bruno’s death, he had accounted for 33 sheep, four domestic rabbits, one guinea pig, some hens and a couple of goats. As Edmund Stoiber, the president of Bavaria, put it, Bruno was a Problembär. And so, in a process begun by our ancestors thousands of years ago, Bruno and his brother were removed from the gene pool, in an effort to ensure that future generations of brown bears will be more sedentary—and vegetarian.
Many people worry about the taming of bears for performance on street corners and in circuses, but few realise how deeply we have altered the ecology of wild bears. Over thousands of years, we have created a more fearful and tractable species—which is, from an ecological perspective, a miniaturised version of the vegan cave bear, and able to survive in today’s densely populated Europe.
The people of northern Italy like their wild bears, but in 1999 the local bear population of the province of Trento was down to just two animals, which had no chance of reproducing. So the Trentinos imported 10 bears from Slovenia. The program was a great success, and today there are about 60 bears in the region. But it has not all been smooth sailing. Recently, a female bear was killed by the authorities after she attacked a hiker. About half of the problems with the Trentino bears, incidentally, stem from members of Jurka’s and Joze’s family, so Jurka, the mother, has been brought into captivity. There can be little doubt that conflict will increase as bear numbers grow. But so far, at least in Italy, both human and bear behaviour is leading to a largely peaceful coexistence.
Elsewhere in Europe bear populations are also recovering. Due to careful conservation, the few bears surviving in Sweden have blossomed over 50 years into a healthy population of 3000 or more, and two tiny populations in northern Spain are increasing after many years of lingering in critically low numbers. But the population in the Abruzzo region, just two hours drive from Rome, is unable to expand. Because of a lack of habitat, it remains frozen at 50–60, making it vulnerable to inbreeding and extinction.
In eastern Europe the brown bear is still present in large numbers in many countries including Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Greece. But to see a truly thriving population you need to go to Romania, where more than 3000 still roam—thanks to the bear-loving despot Nicolae Ceauşescu who, in a resurrection of the caccia medieval, reserved to himself the right to kill bears. So abundant are they that some have taken to rifling through rubbish bins on the outskirts of Braşov, one of the country’s largest cities. Today, Europe’s bear population overall is in good shape, in larger number than those in the lower 48 states of the USA (where they are known as grizzlies).
The Iberian lynx is the largest carnivore unique to Europe. In the stone age it was widespread in southern Europe, and in historic times it roamed throughout the Iberian Peninsula and into southern France. But half a century ago it began a steep decline, due to a reduction of its prey (rabbits), accidents with cars, habitat loss and illegal hunting. By the dawn of the twenty-first century it had been reduced to just 100 individuals, of which only 25 were breeding females, clinging on in two populations in the Montes de Toledo and the Sierra Morena. A massive captive-breeding program, supported by the European Union and costing €100 million, has dragged the Iberian lynx back from the brink of extinction, and today there are more than 500. Its recovery is one of the greatest conservation successes ever seen in Europe.
The Eurasian lynx is a larger feline that once coexisted with the Iberian lynx. Its distribution, however, was far more extensive, covering most of Europe. By the early twentieth century its last refuges were in Scandinavia, the Baltic states, the Carpathians in Romania (which are the European heaven for large carnivores) and the Dinaric Alps in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Between 1972 and 1975 eight wild lynx from the Carpathians were released in the Swiss Jura Mountains, where there are now more than 100, and some have been relocated to the eastern canton of St. Gallen. More reintroductions followed elsewhere in Europe, and now there is even talk of re-introducing the lynx into Scotland.
For centuries seal hunting in Europe was relentless, and many populations were confined to breeding in caves. But people would pursue and slaughter them even there. Irishman Thomas Ó’Crohan left an account of one such hunt, which took place on Great Blasket Island in the late nineteenth century:
The cave was…a very dangerous place, for there was always a strong swell around it, and it’s a long swim into it, and you have to swim sidelong…There was a strong suck of swell running. Often and again the mouth of the hole would fill up completely, so that you’d despair of ever seeing again anybody who happened to be inside…
The Captain of the boat said, ‘Well, what did we come here for? Isn’t anybody ready to have a go at that hole’? It was my uncle who gave him his answer: ‘I’ll go in’, said he ‘if another man will come with me.’ Another man in the boat answered him ‘I’ll go in with you,’ says he. He was a man who stood in need of bit of seal meat, for he spent most of his life on short commons…
Ó’Crohan’s uncle couldn’t swim, but he and the other man went in with a rope held between their teeth, and matches and candles under their hats. After a tremendous struggle they managed to kill all eight seals sheltering in the cave. ‘It’s odd the way the world changes,’ Ó’Crohan wrote much later, in the 1920s. ‘Nobody would put a bit of seal meat down his throat today…yet in those days it was a great resource to the people.’2 When hunting ceased, the grey and harbour seals recovered. Today Great Blasket Island is abandoned, and hundreds of grey seals breed on its beaches.
But not all of Europe’s seals have done so well. Only about 700 individuals of the Mediterranean monk seal survive, across four populations. It is an ancient lineage: fossils dating to about six million years ago have been found in Australia. Until the eighteenth century it reproduced on beaches, but now it uses only inaccessible caves. Ongoing harassment, critically small population size, and ocean pollution, c
ontinue to jeopardise its future.
Much has been done to restore Europe’s raptors. Following reintroduction, red kites once again fly in English skies, white-tailed sea-eagles soar in Scottish skies, and the lammergeier can be seen in the Parc Mercantour in the Maritime Alps. Some raptors are even increasing their range without help, including the sea-eagles of the Oostvaardersplassen, where a pair self-established in 2006, and have bred annually ever since.
Vultures are also recovering, though not without considerable assistance. A program in the Rhodope Mountains, between Bulgaria and Greece, aims to protect black and griffon vultures. These magnificent birds, which are among the largest of all flying creatures, are threatened by farmers who leave poisoned carcasses to kill predators. Teams with specially trained dogs track the carcasses and try to remove them before the vultures consume them. There are also many griffon vultures in the Balkans, and a new colony in Italy’s Abruzzo. Today, some vultures tagged in the Balkans are seen in Gargano and up to Abruzzo, so the populations are joining up. But if Europe is to recover its full suite and population density of large raptors and scavengers, some provision will have to be made for leaving carcasses of domesticated beasts in the field, a practice currently strictly forbidden by the EU, even in nature reserves.
Europe’s populations of carnivores, larger herbivores and scavengers are now healthier than they have been for at least 500 years. Despite its human population of 741 million, Europe is once again becoming a wild and environmentally exciting place. But as some of ancient Europe’s wild beasts are being resurrected, the familiar ‘wild’ Europe of hedgerow and field, celebrated in the works of Beatrix Potter, is in eclipse.
CHAPTER 42
Europe’s Silent Spring
Europe was the first region on Earth to industrialise, and the first in modern times to experience a massive surge in its population. It was also the first to enter the demographic transition (in which both birth and death rates plunged, allowing the population to stabilise and in some cases decline). In much of Europe the population is now maintained by migration or is falling. These profound changes have been accompanied by the development of a new agricultural economy that has displaced human labour with machines and has seen an intensification of agriculture on the best soils, as has occurred on almost every other continent.
Europe’s nineteenth-century agricultural landscapes were the result of human influence over thousands of years, and it’s from this ecology that the natural Europe of childhood storybooks is drawn—a landscape of hedgerows, spinneys and wild riverbanks—tiny semi-natural areas that managed to survive the intense application of human labour. It is a Europe of small creatures—of fieldmice, voles, sparrows and toads—that have adapted over thousands of years to living in a human-manipulated landscape. And elements of that landscape had not altered greatly for millennia—until the late twentieth century. The loss of spinney and hedgerow is a great blow to many Europeans, for it is the loss of a dreaming tied to the potent themes of childhood idylls and freedom. But if we wish to maintain them, someone must be willing to work the small fields and hedgerows of a Beatrix Potter-world, with the skills and willingness to live as characters in a Thomas Hardy novel.
The great changes that banished hedgerows sprang from new technologies, and Europe’s determination to feed itself, which initiated a process we might call industrial-driven decline. Industrial agriculture requires scale, so the hedgerows were ripped out in favour of larger fields enclosed with wire fencing. And efficient agricultural practices began utilising the small, rough corners of farms that had once been wildlife havens. Then began a wholesale drenching of the landscape with agricultural chemicals—fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides—which proved fatal to many smaller beasts.
Butterflies and even ants are among the victims, though nowhere is the decline more evident than among Europe’s birds. A group of researchers has tracked the fortunes of 144 European bird species for 30 years. Using Birdlife International data, they estimated that there were 421 million fewer birds in Europe in 2009 than there had been in 1980.1 As might be predicted, the greatest losses were among farmland species. The study did, however, reveal large increases in the populations of some rare types, probably as a result of the growth of wild lands in remote areas, and high levels of conservation effort. Extremely large losses have occurred in agricultural landscapes in Germany, where it’s estimated that 300 million breeding pairs of smaller birds disappeared between 1980 and 2010—a decline of 57 per cent. Among those hardest hit is the skylark, whose song, once ubiquitous, is now rarely heard. But even the most abundant of birds, such as the song lark, house sparrow (self-introduced to Europe 10,000 years ago) and starlings, are being severely affected.2
From the beautiful Corsican swallowtail—one of Europe’s most lovely butterflies—through to obscure parasitic ants, many insects are now endangered. The black-backed meadow ant is probably extinct in the UK, while the red-barbed ant, narrow-headed ant and the black bog ant are all endangered due to industrial agriculture. More worrisome, very large declines in the volumes of insects have been recorded, even in nature reserves. The use of pesticides and herbicides is having a massive, yet hidden, impact that is striking at the base of food chains.3
The European Union’s agricultural regulations have been unable to combat the threats. As one Spanish biologist put it:
Despite previous reforms, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) largely continues to support a resource-intensive and high-impact agricultural model which is not fit for today’s societal and environmental challenges.4
One assessment marked just 16 per cent of habitats and 23 per cent of species favourably.5 Surely if there is one thing that all Europeans could agree on it is the need to preserve their natural heritage. Over the last 40 years the agricultural policies of the European Union have changed dramatically—towards supporting more environment-friendly practices and less intensive use of soils and lands. But some aspects of its agricultural policy continue to work to destroy ecosystems.
The problem is clear, but the scale of the change required to address it is massive, and the efforts thus far token. Reforms will not be easy to formulate or apply and, most challengingly, we are yet to work out how to feed and support ourselves sustainably at the scale required. We all admire efficiency, but agricultural efficiency is starving many species out of existence. As noted by BfN (German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation) spokesman Franz August Emde: ‘Farmers used to leave a few stalks standing. It gave field hamsters something to nibble on, and the birds benefited as well.’6 In many places, farmers are once again being encouraged to leave corners of fields uncultivated or unharvested, and with financial assistance some large areas of farmland, such as the 1400-hectare Knepp Estate in the English Weald, are being retired from production and returned to nature.7
Nature has a remarkable capacity to recover from human-caused harm. Mark-Oliver Rodel, of Berlin’s natural history museum, has been studying the reproductive behaviour of amphibians that live in places grossly disturbed by humans. They possess an astonishing ability to vary their reproductive patterns, and Rodel thinks that during 2000 years of disturbance, they have adapted genetically. I’m not surprised. After 90 million years, evolution must have taught them something about surviving in Europe.
Globalisation represents a different kind of threat to Europe’s biodiversity. The Asian longhorned beetle, first detected in Italy in 2000, probably arrived in Europe in packing wood. It threatens a range of deciduous trees, including maple, birch and willow, none of which have adequate natural defences against it.8 The larvae kill the trees by boring through the living wood; each one can consume up to a cubic metre of timber before it pupates.
The emerald ash borer is another Asian invader whose larvae destroy ash trees. These large and handsome beetles are just two of innumerable species of tree-infesting bacteria, fungi and invertebrates that have arrived in Europe in recent decades from that great evolutionary powerhouse Asia.
As a result, almost every common type of European tree is now affected by one Asiatic disease or parasite or another. The process began 50 years ago when Europe’s elms were ravaged by the beetle-borne fungal malady misnamed ‘Dutch elm disease’ (which, in fact, is Asian). More recently, sudden oak death, oak decline, beech wilt, sweet chestnut blight and horse chestnut canker have infested Europe’s forests.
In the geological past, when the land bridge to temperate Asia was wide open, and climate favoured tree migration, the trees arrived alongside their pathogens. But because the bridge to Asia today is a human one, involving transported timber and plant seedlings and cuttings, the diseases are arriving in advance of the trees that can withstand them. According to the botanical writer Fiona Stafford, the only way to cope is to mimic what happened in times past, and plant Europe’s forests with Asian varieties of the species at risk which, because they co-evolved with the diseases, are resistant to them.9
All of these changes are happening during the most rapid shift in climate in geological history. The current warming trend is at least 30 times faster than the warming that melted the great ice sheets at the end of the last glacial maximum, and the warming is increasing temperatures from one of the warmest points in the last three million years of Earth history. The cycle of ice ages has already been broken. Great ice sheets will not again advance across the north: the Pleistocene—one of the most tumultuous eras in Europe’s turbulent geological history—is over.
Global temperatures are already 1° Celsius warmer than they were 200 years ago, and Europe is warming faster than the global average. Europe’s forests and meadows are budding earlier in spring and birds are migrating earlier. Insects such as butterflies are not only appearing earlier but are reaching much further north than they used to. Climate change is a process, not a destination, and future changes will have far more impact. Both the Arctic tundra—a vital breeding ground for many species, including migratory geese—and alpine meadows are in danger of being smothered by forest. And that will mean farewell to the edelweiss, adieu the eider goose.