Actually, I'd prefer it if the wolf was kept from my door | Catherine Bennett

Rewilders who want to bring back predator species have no idea what they're risking. Time to spoil their funFor anyone raised on Grimms' fairytales - or wary of cows, hostile-looking geese - there have always been certain obvious difficulties with ambitious rewilding campaigns. Reintroducing beavers is one thing. Boars: maybe. But among the more appealing aspects of life in Britain, for the nervous, is the relative certainty of never encountering a wolf pack.Recent celebrations over the return of these predators to the outskirts of Rome attest, however, to the huge success of rewilders, within a couple of decades, in dispelling this sort of unsubstantiated, if ancient, anti-wolf sentiment. Far from representing a threat to humans, wolf supporters insist, the creatures are shy, peaceable types, outrageously traduced in The Three Little Pigs, much less aggressive towards us than dogs - no great surprise, really, given the numerical difference, but you get the point. Continue reading...