Conservation and Science

Is it a wild boar or a feral pig in the Scottish Highlands? Does it really matter what we call it? And how can an animal that was once native end up on the list of non-native invasive species? In ten years of this podcast, wild boar came up many times in episodes about hunting, genetics, rewilding and even swine fever, yet we never had an episode dedicated to them. Today we fix that. Descendants of animals that escaped or were released from farms now roam the Scottish Highlands, but there is still no agreement on what they are, whether they belong and what should be done about them. As it turns out, the name matters a great deal. It shapes how people relate to the animal, how they react when they meet it and how, or if, it is managed. And many of the same questions are being asked here in Ireland.
To discuss this topic I'm joined by Toryn Whitehead, a PhD researcher in the Department of Geography at King's College London and one of the authors of the paper 'Feral Pigs or Wild Boar? Emerging Interpretations of Belonging and Coexistence in the Scottish Highlands'. Toryn's path to this work is unusual, as he started out with a degree in chemistry before swapping the lab bench for interviews with crofters, gamekeepers and landowners. During our conversation, we go through the history of wild boar in Scotland, from their extirpation centuries ago to the farm imports of the 1980s. We discuss the strange legal situation where the same animal is a wild boar inside the fence and a feral pig once it steps outside. Toryn also explains the 'extinction of experience' and why, even though wild boar feature in clan crests and old songs, one crofter told him they are 'vermin, not game'.
We also talk about the hands-off approach of the Scottish government, which leaves landowners to decide what to do with the animals on their land, and the tensions this creates between neighbours, especially when a rewilding estate becomes a safe haven for boar. We touch on the threat of African swine fever and the lack of any reliable data on numbers and impacts, which leaves plenty of room for misinformation. Toryn shares the story of a video of a sow charging a dog that spread quickly through Facebook and WhatsApp. To some it was an attack, while people from Spain and Estonia saw a mother protecting her piglet. Finally, Toryn tells us about his work with other researchers and NGOs to start a national conversation about these animals, and why empathy matters so much when a species returns after centuries of absence.
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Why does the blackthorn along our motorways flower weeks before the blackthorn in the hedgerows? How did Ireland end up with so many deer, and would bringing back the wolf solve the problem? And are farmers really the villains that some headlines make them out to be? Every now and then there is an episode with a guest who needs no introduction, and this is one of them. I'm joined by Éanna Ní Lamhna, biologist, broadcaster, Irish Times columnist and a panellist on RTÉ's Mooney Goes Wild since 1995. She is also a former president of both An Taisce and the Tree Council of Ireland. Our conversation opens with gardening, as Éanna explains why a weed is simply a plant in the wrong place. She also tells us why the real trouble starts when garden plants such as rhododendron escape into the wild, and how to keep garden birds safe from disease at the feeder.
From there, we move on to the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use, where Éanna is communications officer. She explains how rat poisons move up the food chain, with traces found in 80% of Irish barn owls and even in sparrowhawks and falcons that never eat rats. Éanna doesn't let me off the hook either when I share the story of the mice in my shed and the buzzard I spotted a few days after putting out poison. Then we turn to deer, a subject close to my heart and the hearts of many listeners. Éanna explains how the loss of the wolf, the arrival of sika and fallow deer, and plenty of grassland led to the numbers we see today. She also tells me why today's Ireland has no room for wolves. Would she press a button to make all sika deer disappear? And what can each of us do about the problem? Her answer is simple: eat venison.
In the final part of our conversation, we talk about farming and the uneasy relationship between farmers and environmentalists. Éanna argues that farmers are among the most regulated people in the country and that most of them want to see birds and wildlife on their land. She doesn't ignore the problems, such as the switch from hay to silage that hit curlews and corncrakes, or nutrients washing into our rivers. But she also points to the forces behind these changes, from EU payment schemes to supermarkets selling carrots below cost. And she has a challenge for those of us who complain about the price of food while mowing our lawns every week. If you enjoy this episode, I recommend Éanna's 'The Great Irish Biodiversity Book', and as Éanna says, go out and enjoy the world around you!
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What does the label 'protected area' actually tell you about what is being protected? How did the wolf lose its strict protection status in the EU? And what about a legal system that looks strong on paper but leaves animals exposed on the ground? Those questions sit at the heart of 'Protecting Wildlife in Europe: A Comprehensive Analysis of Legislative Frameworks and Their Shortcomings', a paper published in July this year in the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy. Today I'm joined by both of its authors. Caroline Cox is an Associate Professor in Wildlife Crime and Policy at the University of Portsmouth. Dr Meganne Natali is a lawyer and legal consultant specialising in wildlife crime, zoonoses prevention and biodiversity conservation. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Portsmouth School of Law. Europe has strong institutions, extensive legislation and considerable scientific knowledge. What it doesn't have, they argue, is a body of law that treats wild animals as individuals capable of suffering rather than as stock, functions and entries in an annex.
Caroline and Meganne first met at a conference in Florence and have worked together ever since. Caroline spent years on elephant poaching and the illegal ivory trade before turning her attention to wildlife closer to home. Our conversation starts with fragmentation. EU wildlife law is not one system but several layers sitting on top of each other. The Birds Directive, the Habitats Directive, CITES and national legislation each bring their own lists of species, different listings trigger different levels of protection, and implementation is left to member states. From there we move to national parks. In England and Wales the framework dates to 1949, with two aims that regularly collide, conserving the landscape and giving everyone access to it. Caroline lives in the New Forest and describes what happens there when too many visitors arrive at once. We also get into the badger cull and its link to bovine TB.
The wolf takes up a good part of the episode, as it tends to on this podcast. Meganne explains how a species whose numbers grew from around 11,000 animals in 2012 to more than 20,000 in 2023 was moved from Annex IV to Annex V, and what that does and does not change for member states and for wolves. That opens a bigger question about whether protection status should be settled by ecologists or by politicians. There is also a problem with defending wildlife on economic grounds. The same argument runs the other way the moment an animal becomes costly. We also talk about social inequality, compensation for farmers and who ends up carrying the cost of conservation.
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The guest featured in this episode paid a nominal guesting fee. This fee did not directly influence the content of the episode. The guest had no editorial control, did not review the episode before publication, and did not influence the questions asked during the interview.

How do you tell solid science from something dressed up to look like it? Are we living through the sixth mass extinction? And why is the climate crisis not the worst of the planetary boundaries we have crossed? My guest today is Amy McEuen, a professor of Biology at the University of Illinois Springfield, where she has taught environmental biology, ecology and conservation biology for more than twenty years. Her book, 'How to Think Like an Ecologist: A Non-Scientist's Guide to Saving Our Planet', is written for people without a science background and is laid out like a field guide, so you can read the chapters in any order you like. What caught my attention is that Amy spends the opening chapters on what science actually is and on how misinformation works before she gets anywhere near ecology. Our conversation follows much the same path.
We spend a fair bit of time on that groundwork because I think it matters a lot. Amy explains the difference between misinformation and disinformation, why fact checkers read laterally rather than arguing with an article line by line, and why prebunking works better than debunking. From there we move on to nature itself. If humans are part of nature, does the word still mean anything useful? Amy also argues that we get further by asking people what they value about a particular place than by asking them to defend nature in the abstract. We also pull apart the idea of a historical baseline, since choosing a date to restore the land to is a fairly arrogant thing to do and not much use when the whole global environment is shifting.
Then we get to the numbers. To qualify as a mass extinction, 75% of taxa have to disappear from the planet, and Amy explains why the honest answer to 'are we in the sixth one?' is both yes and no. We also talk some more about planetary boundaries and why biodiversity loss and novel entities such as plastics and synthetic chemicals are worse than climate change, even though climate takes up most of the oxygen in the room. We finish with talking about policy, paradigms and eco-anxiety. Is policy change enough on its own or does something have to shift in how we see the world? And how do you talk about any of this without either frightening people into switching off or offering false comfort?
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The guest featured in this episode paid a nominal guesting fee. This fee did not directly influence the content of the episode. The guest had no editorial control, did not review the episode before publication, and did not influence the questions asked during the interview.
Tommy’s Outdoors is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk

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