Facing our fears: Rewilding the human psyche

Predators returning worldwide challenge our modern detachment from nature. A safari in Hluhluwe, where lions' roars evoke ancient fears, shows us our primal connection to the wild. Rewilding and reintroducing species like wolves and lynx revive ecosystems but stir human fears and cultural conflicts. It's not about erasing progress but about adapting to ecological challenges and fostering landscapes where nature and humanity can thrive together. Carlos Amato goes camping in his piece first published on FirstRand Perspectives..Rewilding the human mind.By Carlos Amato.Large predators are returning worldwide, but the precious ecological balance they restore can be obscured by fear..To get a sense of the thinness of your modernity, take a two-day walking safari in the Hluluwe game park in KwaZulu-Natal. I did this a few years ago, and we camped on a rise above the river for the night. Around the fireside, we heard a nearby pride of lions killing an antelope on the riverbank..Later that night, inside my tent, I heard a booming, brutal growl – from a sated but still moody lion right next to our camp. Two armed guides were in the next tent. Rationally, I knew we were not in danger; the pride had already feasted that night. But the primordial bass voice of a free lion on its turf seemed to pierce my stomach like a claw..I had never been so afraid. In an instant, I had become an early human. But I was an early human without a clue. I barely slept – woken periodically by the misleading snores of one of our guides. Dawn had never been so welcome. We found a lion spoor a few steps away from the tents..Feeling an ancient fear of an ancient adversary is not just a transient thrill for bush tourists. It is now part of the reality of a rewilding world in which large predators are returning to landscapes where they had not roamed for centuries, and humans are slowly learning to live with them again..When such returning predators are actively reintroduced by conservationists, they are almost always not the species that used to dine on pre-modern Homo sapiens. For example, India is bringing back cheetahs to the plains of Madhya Pradesh, while the Eurasian lynx may soon return to the Cairngorms in Scotland. Those are tough cats, but not so tough that they loom large in our subconscious..But some other returning carnivores are reanimating old human landscapes of fear. The most obvious case is that of wolves, which have recolonised much of rural western Europe of their own accord in the last two decades by migrating gradually from their redoubts in the forests of Poland. The steady human abandonment of rural settlements, in combination with new laws against shooting wolves, has created the space and corridors for those wolves to return. As a result, farmers across Europe are now afraid for their livestock – often with good reason. Villagers also fear for their pets and (less rationally) for their children and themselves. Wolves avoid humans, but they did sometimes kill humans in the past, and they still can if we don't understand how to live with them..The irony is that wolves and other large predators can improve rural life by being scary. They heal broken ecological balances precisely by restoring an old landscape of fear in the consciousness of their natural prey. When wolves move into overgrazed lands, they obviously control deer populations, but they also change the behaviour of herbivores in critical ways. Deer must graze furtively and selectively, looking for wooded cover, and sparing both open meadows or confined gullies and hollows where they are suddenly vulnerable to ambush. This new wariness gives grass undergrowth and saplings a chance to thrive and creates a more varied mosaic of terrain..Carcasses are eaten by wolves, instead of rotting slowly or being removed by people – and this speeds the process of nutrient recycling by rerouting it through the wolf's gut, thus reversing the depletion of the soil. Pollinating insects, birds and fish all start to flourish, erosion eases, flooding reduces, and water seeps deeper. The intricate equilibrium of the landscape resumes. In the context of a climate crisis, this effect is a big deal..And the return of "keystone predators" like wolves is helping farmers in quicker, more direct ways, says Marco Davoli, a researcher at Roma La Sapienza University, Italy, who has recently obtained his PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark. "In the last fifty or sixty years, since we removed all the apex predators, we have had an explosion of large herbivores," he says. "Red deer are the biggest herbivore, but they are becoming bigger and seriously damaging crops – causing farmers far more problems than wolves.".However, because most of the socio-economic benefits of rewilding unfold slowly and because rewilding is largely a cause promoted by urban academics and officials, many rural people despise the whole idea. The old fear of the predator intersects with a fear of change and elite power, driving the culture war between populist and metropolitan worldviews.."In Italy, the hunters and farmers lobby is right-leaning," says Davoli, "and the right-wing parties want to halt wildlife return because they have a more pragmatic approach, while usually, the left parties are more open to rewilding, and in general are more open to European directives.".Meanwhile, in the German-speaking cantons of the Swiss Alps, deep-rooted Christian folklore still demonises wolves, almost literally. "There are folk tales dating back thousands of years about wolves being demons," says Davoli. "This despite the fact that there are very few wolves in those areas, and people actively kill them, even though it's illegal.".Davoli says he has spoken to farmers in the Abruzzo region of Italy who still believe wolves have been released into their mountains by university professors – this has never happened in Italy, where wolves never left, although their numbers dropped to less than 50 in the central Apenine range in the 1960s and have since recovered to about 2,000..Rumours abound of genetic meddling or hybridisation in wolf DNA. "Other farmers even tell me that poisonous snakes – indigenous asp vipers – are being thrown down from helicopters," says Davoli. "It's quite funny in a way, but it's a huge problem for conservation.".Peter Cairns of the rewilding organisation SCOTLAND: The Big Picture is campaigning to return the Eurasian lynx to the Scottish wilderness, where it lived until it was hunted to extinction around 1 300 years ago. The lynx is just one part of a big dream for nature recovery in Scotland. Surveys show the most popular support for lynx reintroduction, but the "no" camp remains strong in parts of the Highlands..Cairns believes human resistance to rewilding is down to two entwined impulses: a fear of change and an anxiety about loss of control. "If you look at the story of wolves into Yellowstone Park in the US in the nineties, lynx into Scotland, or vultures into Bulgaria – the species is almost irrelevant. The characters change, and the backdrop changes, but the story is pretty much the same."."People tend to fear change, especially when they feel it is being imposed on them by whoever they consider to be the establishment," says Cairns. "In the UK, we've grown used to having control over every square inch of this country and all the species within it. And we've made it work, but for one species: us. So the concept of ceding control to any other animal or to a set of natural processes is alien to many people. This is about psychology rather than ecology.".Beavers have recently been reintroduced to Scottish rivers and have set about building leaky dams, which prevent flooding and provide luxury accommodation for fish, small mammals and insects. Even so, farmers complain about their tiny losses of crops or grazing land to their toothy guests. "Beavers are doing their ecological job but still find themselves in the crosshairs of a social and cultural debate," says Cairns. "And if it wasn't beaver, it would be something else.".That said, a farmer who loses ten sheep in one night to a wolf attack is not imagining the risks of rewilding. Wolves don't prey in moderation on sheep: they often slaughter many more animals than they need to eat in an opportunistic frenzy because sheep huddle together when attacked instead of fleeing as deer do. Even the smaller jackals in South Africa can kill more than they need..Governments do compensate farmers for stock losses to wolves. And there are imperfect ways to protect the livestock, such as using expensive wolf-proof fencing or traditional livestock guardian dogs. These dogs grow up with and become part of their flock – they bond with the herd from puppyhood, consider themselves alpha sheep and will fiercely defend their woolly family unsupervised by shepherds. But these dogs, and the traditional art of training and managing them, have been absent in Western Europe for many years, which takes time to recover. Nor can guardian dogs win every battle with wolves or pick all their battles wisely, and they can also attack hikers..Marine Drouilly knows the conflict between farmers and predators intimately. Currently, she is the regional coordinator for wild cat surveys and research in West and Central Africa for the NGO Panthera. She previously studied the caracal, leopard, and jackal populations of the Great Karoo in South Africa..Drouilly conducted a study in which she collected and analysed predator scat (droppings) to compare their diet in a protected reserve in the Western Cape with their diet in Karoo farmland..Drouilly's findings surprised the farmers she stayed with in the Karoo: the caracal, leopard and jackal in the protected area almost never ate livestock, despite often wandering into surrounding stockland, preferring instead to hunt their natural prey. But she also found that the farmers were right to worry about jackals' taste for mutton and lamb – they ate more sheep when living in farmland than the availability of sheep and other prey would lead us to expect. And the centuries-old war between the South African sheep farmer and the wily jackal will not end soon..Currently, Drouilly is trying to establish how many leopards and African golden cats survive in West Africa's forests using camera traps and surveying markets where skins are sold..The relationship between humans and leopards in West Africa is deep and complex. "For example, in Benin cosmology, the leopard used to be the most revered of all creatures," she says. "It symbolised the Oba's (emperor's) authority, the loyalty of his subjects, and high status. Today, many families in Benin have the leopard as a taboo, meaning that they are not allowed to kill or eat it." Even so, habitat loss and hunting have decimated leopard populations across the region, and many governments are working with Panthera to protect them..Drouilly says rewilding can transform the human relationship with the landscape economically and psychologically. "Most of the NGOs currently working on rewilding projects embrace the role of people and communities and their cultural and economic connections to the land. Rewilding can provide new economic opportunities. However, it necessitates a change of paradigm in our vision of nature. In rewilding, it is nature who leads.".But the objective is not to rewind our landscapes to some Edenic, arbitrary point in its past. "The past provides a reference," says Cairns. "But there is no possibility of recreating it. We need to look at the challenges right now: nutrient loss, flooding, warming rivers, and pop back in place the processes that can help mitigate those challenges. This isn't a conversation for left-wing, bunny-hugging vegans. It's not an environmental conversation – it's a societal conversation. You don't need to give a shit about lynx or wolves or beavers, but you do give a shit about whether your kids can breathe clean air and drink fresh water, and your house is not being flooded every two years.".In other words, we are in danger, but the danger is not an apex predator..Read also:.Meet Mannas Fourie: The leader behind the rescue of 246 Stilfontein zama-zamas destined to returnHappy Capetonians propel the Mother City to world's best city status – Time Out's Andrew HallettPythagoras: The mystic mathematician who bridged numbers and the divine

Facing our fears: Rewilding the human psyche

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