Most natural history books I read and review invite superlatives about charm. Mary Colwell certainly writes with charm, but the content of this book is far from charming; in essence, it is a book about death, and death at a staggering scale.
Beak, Tooth and
Claw is an exploration of life alongside predators in Britain. Whilst this is
the book's main theme, the book highlights the wider natural history issues of
our relationship with the world and our place in it, or perhaps more accurately,
our impact upon it.
The book is
structured as a series of case studies looking at the fortunes of a number of predatory
mammal and bird species. The introduction sets the stage well, exploring what
predators are both historically, psychologically and philosophically. Consider,
for example, that even the humble Blue Tit is both predator and prey. Each of
these species is in conflict with us in some way, and usually it comes down to
money, either the money lost when livestock is killed or believed to be killed by
the predator or the money gained from shooting or hunting.
Inevitably, Colwell
discusses the darker side of predator control, including fox hunting and
shooting, but she seeks to understand the issue without prejudice, several
times meeting members of these communities. She makes every effort to present
both sides of the argument while still prioritising fact over sentiment. This
approach lends credibility to the discussion, although I do not feel the book
offers a firm conclusion. Instead, Colwell ends with a chapter on hope, acknowledging
the benefits of rewilding and reintroduction. Some may call this cowardice, but
I would frame it as a more respectful thought piece: one that presents
information clearly and uses careful prose to illustrate the issues rather than
force a verdict.
The book offers
several key takeaways. First, it highlights the passion and dedication of the many
conservationists who work tirelessly to improve the fortunes of British
wildlife. It also exposes the ever-present drive for profit, both in the corporate
world of big business and at the local scale. The biggest takeaway for me,
however, was the complete disconnect between the modern British citizen and the
landscape in which they reside.
Predator
populations rise and fall; it is natural, as anyone who has studied the
Lotka-Volterra predator-prey models will understand. In a functioning ecosystem,
species thrive and decline within a dynamic equilibrium, a shifting balance. Interfere
with that balance and you create something new. Britain's lack of apex
predators, for example, has contributed to a booming deer population, which then
needs control, often through hunting. We have knocked over the dominoes, and
they are still falling. To continue the analogy, the dominoes can never be put
back exactly where they were. Even if we stopped all nature degradation and
reintroduced every missing species, the result would not be the past restored.
Whatever was, was.
That wider
imbalance is not abstract to me; it is visible in the changes I have seen in
familiar species over the course of my own life.
In my lifetime, I
have witnessed many changes in predator numbers. Red Kites, following reintroduction,
are now as common in Warwick as they were in Aberystwyth 25 years ago. Buzzards,
once absent from Warwickshire, are plentiful. By contrast, I remember seeing a
Kestrel hovering over almost every motorway as a child; now, those hovering
birds are a much rarer sight.
One story I felt
was missing from the book was the arrival of mink in the UK and its effect on our
waterways. It would have served as a useful juxtaposition to the chapters on
lynx and wolf: while those species raise questions about reintroduction, mink
show how dramatically an introduced predator can reshape ecosystems when it
arrives without the cultural, ecological or practical preparation needed to
live alongside it. Much has been written about the reintroduction of lynx and wolves,
and while I think lynx are a more viable option than wolves, the biggest
obstacle remains the collective psyche of the British public, conditioned for
generations to live without large predators. There is no longer the cultural knowledge.
People can live
alongside these species; Scandinavians and many other Europeans do. But in
those places, large predators have remained continuous and contiguous with the native
population. The folktale side of these animals is paired with practical,
pragmatic knowledge of how to live alongside them. That cultural ability to
coexist is something I think would be immensely difficult to achieve in the UK.
We are so removed from our 16th-century selves that coexistence
with apex predators is nigh on impossible.
For readers
interested in British wildlife, rewilding, predator politics and the uneasy
moral terrain of conservation, Beak, Tooth and Claw is well worth reading. It
is less a neat argument for or against predator reintroduction than a
thoughtful account of why these debates remain so difficult.
Beak, Tooth and
Claw is an easy, comfortable and thought-provoking read. It is well researched and
discusses many of the problems endemic to modern conservation through the lens
of Britain's predators. More importantly, it leaves the reader with the harder
question: not whether predators belong in our landscape, but whether we are
still willing, culturally and politically, to make room for them.
You can purchase the book here
