IS an experiment that looks set to go ahead in Northumberland crazy?

Or, to use words closer to what’s proposed, wildly irresponsible?

Enthusiasts for the concept of rewilding Britain aim to reintroduce the lynx, initially in Kielder forest. They’ve formed the Lynx UK Trust, which has submitted a plan to release six lynx (four females, two males) captured in Sweden. And they see the idea as a win for the community as well as nature.

Branded The Kingdom of the Lynx, the Kielder forest would become, in the enthusiastic words of Dr Paul O’Donoghue, the trust’s chief scientific adviser: “The number one wildlife site in the UK by a mile. It blows sea eagles out of the water. We predict millions in tourism.” But hang on. There’s one snag straight away – admitted by Dr O’Donoghue though not in that term. He explains that lynx are lone predators, which operate at dawn and dusk. And: “They are masters of evasion and very secretive. They don’t want to come across a person.”

So lynx-spotting seems rarely likely to yield more than a brief glimpse of a single animal. It’s certainly hard to see this limited prospect drawing sufficient lynx-seeking tourists to produce the overflowing pot of gold envisaged by Dr O’Donoghue.

Meanwhile the Lynx Trust calculates that a Kielder lynx population would kill an average of 2.4 sheep per year. We might be staggered by such pinpoint accuracy, and certainly the minimal anticipated sheep loss sits oddly with proposed “welfare”

measures offered by the trust to farmers.

These go beyond compensation for killed animals to grants for fencing, lambing sheds and even llamas to guard flocks. Now being considered by Natural England, the trust’s proposed five-year trial would see the animals monitored by satellite collars.

B UT of course confining wild animals to some testbed area is notoriously difficult. Introduced in the 1880s the grey squirrel is now widely deemed a national menace (though not by this writer).

Until a determined extermination programme was launched, wild mink, descended from escapees from farms, infested our rivers, imperilling the otter’s return. Wild boar, also descended from farm escapees, now pose serious problems in several areas, notably the Forest Of Dean.

So the perhaps rather gung-ho approach of the Lynx Trust maybe needs a steadying hand. The trust suggests the chief prey of the lynx will be roe deer. But if a lynx, though no bigger than many cats, will take a roe deer farmers can be excused for wondering why it would pass up the easier prize of a sheep or a lamb.

Regardless, Dr O’Donoghue is already assessing further release sites, such as the Grizedale Forest in the Lake District and Thetford Forest in Norfolk. In our denselypopulated small island the possible impact of the populations there, and their likely spread, needs to be weighed most carefully.

Dr O’Donoghue declares: “When I go to Romania and say people are concerned about lynx here they laugh. They have 9,000 grizzly bears in their country and nobody is bothered about that.” No doubt there is room for them that we don’t have. Might not the same be true of the lynx, absent from Britain for the last 1,300 years?