Six of the secretive cats could be released in Northumberland’s Kielder forest if an application by the Lynx UK Trust is approved

Damian Carrington Environment editor

Friday 7 July 2017 15.39 BST Last modified on Friday 7 July 2017 22.00 BST

After an absence of 1,300 years, the lynx could be back in UK forests by the end of 2017. The Lynx UK Trust has announced it will apply for a trial reintroduction for six lynx into the Kielder forest, Northumberland, following a two-year consultation process with local stakeholders.

The secretive cat can grow to 1.5m in length and feeds almost exclusively by ambushing deer. Attacks on humans are unknown, but it was hunted to extinction for its fur in the UK. The Kielder forest was chosen by the trust from five possible sites, due to its abundance of deer, large forest area and the absence of major roads.

Sheep farmers and some locals are opposed to the reintroduction, but Dr Paul O’Donoghue, chief scientific advisor to the Lynx UK Trust and expert adviser to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) believes there are good reasons for reintroducing the predator.

 “Lynx belong here as much as hedgehogs, badgers, robins, blackbirds - they are an intrinsic part of the UK environment,” he told the Guardian. “There is a moral obligation. We killed every single last one of them for the fur trade, that’s a wrong we have to right.”

Rural communities would also benefit from eco-tourism, O’Donoghue said: “They will generates tens of millions of pounds for struggling rural UK economies. Lynx have already been reintroduced in the Harz mountains in Germany. They have branded the whole area the ‘kingdom of the lynx’. Now it is a thriving ecotourism destination and we thought we could do exactly the same for Kielder,” he said.

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