THE boss of a leading green charity has suggested the wild lynx could be back in Scotland in less than a decade.

And Steve Micklewright, chief executive of Trees for Life (TfL), says the Scottish Government should pay farmers to put up with the predators, which many fear will attack sheep and other livestock.

Micklewright and TfL are advocates of rewilding, or restoring countryside to its wild state. The charity is developing an ambitious scheme to rewild 500,000 acres of the Highlands around Glen Affric.

Under Micklewright’s leadership the charity has doubled in size and successfully challenged the Scottish Government in court over the shooting of reintroduced beavers.

Now he says: “The next big thing if we can pull it off is a trial reintroduction of lynx.”

The idea has been suggested before: the cat, the size of a Labrador dog, hunts deer in woodland and could help solve the problem of overgrazing in Scottish forests. It lived wild in Scotland until about the eighth century, when it was hunted to extinction.

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Other charities such as Scottish Wildlife Trust have said there is a case for its reintroduction. No licences have yet been issued for a lynx trial anywhere in the UK, and so far no-one has put a timescale on the move.

But Micklewright said: “I feel that we’re on the journey there … we have started that process. Can we see lynx back in five or ten years? That’s the big challenge, I think, getting the missing back.”

Livestock farmers will object strongly to any plans for the introduction of a new predator. In Norway, lynx predation of sheep has been a serious problem, and farmers opposed a proposed trial lynx reintroduction in the Kielder Forest, on the Scottish border with Northumberland. That plan was rejected by the UK Government.

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The National Farmers Union Scotland (NFUS) said plans for lynx reintroduction are “wholly unacceptable”.

Micklewright responded to farmers’ fears by saying: “I understand that concern, and the process we are going through includes working with those interests … We identified six potential problems and barriers to lynx reintroduction, of which sheep predation is undoubtedly the number one concern.

“If you look at the science and the evidence, it says it shouldn’t be a problem because lynx like to live in woodland, they’re secretive, and generally sheep and lambs don’t live in woodland so they shouldn’t come across each other.”

But, speaking to the Windswept and Interesting podcast, he admits: “It could be an issue – so how do you figure out how to resolve it? I think the route to go down is a trial reintroduction where the trial includes trying to figure out whether this sheep predation issue is big, and whether it is something that would affect whether we would welcome lynx back fully into Scotland.”

And he says a Government subsidy scheme to help farmers put up with the predator could be an important element of the reintroduction of lynx: “If we want wildlife back as a country we have to be prepared to pay for it. The traditional way is to pay farmers for the loss of sheep but I like the American model where they pay farmers to have the missing [animals] on their land … that’s a better model.”

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The NFUS said that it hopes the Scottish Government will honour a previous ministerial pledge not to allow the return of the lynx.

A spokesman said: “In our opinion, despite numerous attempts, no local consensus nor political consensus has ever been secured for such a release.

“Farmers and crofters in Scotland can be confident that the union … will take all necessary steps to ensure their interests are protected were a formal application ever to be made."

You can find the Windswept and Interesting podcast on Spotify.