FROM my youth onwards, there were rumours of (Scottish) wild cats and capercaillies being released in the Borders and Northumberland and Cumbria forests.

In 1972, I was shown (and later obtained) a recent skin of a lynx ‘shot in Redesdale’ – which I was, and am, very sceptical about.

I’ve watched lynxes in Northern Eurasian and North American forests (they have true wildernesses, we emphatically do not) finding them predators of birds and small mammals, as well as bigger mammals, including deer and ‘domestic’ livestock.

If Kielder lynx succeed, they are too elusive to be a tourist draw, except for the doubtful benefit of expectation, anticipation, hope and chance. Let us see, but there will be opposition.

C. SIMMS

Alston