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15 - Mammals in the twentieth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

By
D.W. Yalden
Edited by
Norman Maclean
Norman Maclean
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Summary

Summary

Of the 49 or so terrestrial mammals in Britain (bats excluded), 14 have increased strongly in range and numbers over the last 50 years, five or six have declined, and the status of the others is variable or uncertain. The increases largely indicate recovery from more ancient declines due to persecution, while the declines reflect especially problems with introduced species (competitors or predators) and changes in land use. The biomass is overwhelmingly dominated by humans and domestic ungulates (97%), leaving little ecological room for wild species, but there is scope to restore a little more balance by reintroducing long-extinct species.

Introduction

The recent history of mammals in the British Isles has been reasonably well surveyed, and well reported. Summaries of recent (last 50 years) changes have been presented by, among others, Corbet and Yalden (2001) and Harris et al. (Chapter 2 in Harris and Yalden 2008). The longer history (back to 10,000 b.p.) has been summarised by Yalden (1999) and Yalden and Kitchener (Chapter 3 in Harris and Yalden 2008), allowing recent changes to be placed in a longer historical perspective. A national distribution atlas at the hectad (10 km) level was published first, tentatively, in 1971 (Corbet 1971), and updated three times (Arnold 1978, 1984, 1993).

Type
Chapter
Information
Silent Summer
The State of Wildlife in Britain and Ireland
 , pp. 245 - 258
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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