SHEEP farming could become untenable in Kielder and Tarset if the proposed release of lynx gets the go-ahead, it has been claimed.

Hundreds of farmers fearing for their livelihoods packed out Elsdon Village Hall to express these fears at a National Sheep Association meeting – held in the wake of news that the Lynx Trust UK had submitted its application to Natural England.

The trust wants to release four female and two male wild lynx in the area for a five-year trial period and argue that it would be a massive boost for tourism, bringing potentially millions of pounds into the area

But at the meeting, held last Wednesday night, farmers were told it could take just seven years of breeding to turn the initial six big cats into 100.

NSA chief executive Phil Stocker said: “It is clear there is a genuine concern that a lynx release has the potential to make sheep farming in Kielder and the surrounding area non-viable.

“This thing about it being a pilot and being able to put the genie back in the bottle... I can’t begin to envisage how they would do that.”

Some of the most revered British landscapes tourists flocked to were fashioned and maintained by sheep farming, those present agreed. And in a generation when foxes being torn apart by hounds was deemed morally repugnant, how could releasing lynx to tear sheep apart be acceptable?

One-time farmer and author of Counting Sheep: The Pastoral Heritage of Britain , Philip Walling, said: “It’s an awful intrusion on private land.

“At the minute, a farmer can shoot anything predating on his livestock, but these things will be protected and you will probably go to prison if you shoot one.”

Counterparts in Norway and the Franco-Swiss Jura Mountains testified to the fact wild lynx there had “diversified” away from their natural diet of roe deer to hunt easier-to-catch sheep.

Phil Stocker said a Norwegian farmer helping the NSA compile a report recounted incidents of lynx getting over 6ft high enclosures and dragging sheep back out over them.

The wild cats were also known to target smaller prey too, something that could rapidly turn into a problem for ground-nesting birds, as well as protected red squirrel, pine marten and water vole populations in Kielder Forest.

At a time when farmers were already facing an uncertain post-Brexit future, this alien predator on their doorstep could prove the final straw, Mr Stocker said.

“The discussion tonight has highlighted the crucial role farming and forestry is contributing to an already thriving tourism industry, begging the question: what is at stake here?”

Representatives of the NFU, from Scotland and its Warwickshire headquarters, and of the British Deer Society also attended the meeting.