For thousands of years, people in the British Isles lived with and depended on wild animals for food and clothes. The land teemed with species such as deer, boar, wolves, lynx and beavers. Then came farming, population growth and industrialisation. Many species were hunted to extinction and their habitats were lost.
Archaeological research reaches back in time to understand how humans and wild animals interacted. Ancient bones and teeth reveal these complex relationships.
Today, interactions between wild animals and people are often in the news, from urban foxes to tree-felling beavers and wild boars. Even the red deer – the monarch of the glen, celebrated as a symbol of wild Scotland – is facing widespread calls for population control and, on the Hebridean island of South Uist, total eradication.
