Lies, damn lies and George Monbiot

The only thing worse than turning a corner in a country lane and coming face to face with Chris Packham, is being stuck in one of George Monbiot's lectures and being battered by his ego for what seems like an eternity.

It is for this reason that we have avoided watching to his video showing how wolves have changed that landscape of the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. It seemed too much like self-harm. But we decided last week that it was our duty to watch what is the foundation of many people’s belief that rewilding, and releasing large apex predators into the crowded English countryside, is a brilliant way to solve everything – and at no cost!

The purpose of the video is to sell the idea that, by releasing wolves into Yellowstone National Park, they would create what is known as a ‘trophic cascade’ that has, in a few years, turned grassland into forest and made the rivers change course. We can recommend it to anyone who has a sound grasp of ornithology, botany, mammalogy and reality. We would suggest you avoid it if you are stupid, ill-informed about wildlife and ecology, or under the influence of intoxicating or hallucinatory substances.

We have to admit that we expected it to be one-sided and biased, and in that regard it did not disappoint; but we did not expect it to be as bizarre and fake as it is. David Attenborough it is not. The Teletubbies perhaps, but The Blue Planet? Definitely not.

Remember that this farrago is supposed to inspire belief in the omniscience of rewilding and quasi-religious fervour amongst its converts. To be fair, it does. We have been lectured by these converts on the amazing transformation they have seen with their own eyes thanks to the Monbiot video. They have seen it. He has said it. It must be true.

Have a look. It does not start well. A huge, noble eagle swoops down to catch a fish. This is not the surprise. Catching fish is, after all, what African Fish Eagles do. The surprise is that someone thinks we are so stupid that we can't tell the difference between a Bald Eagle and a completely different eagle that lives in Africa. Whether that someone was George, or whether he was one of the stupid ones, we cannot say.

It does not get better. George tells us that the wolves made the elk change the way the grazed and this has resulted in forests returning where there had previously been only the attractive grassy meadows and prairie that Yellowstone is famous for. This has, we are told, resulted in badgers arriving in greater numbers, and is proven by film of a newly arrived Yellowstone badger. Unfortunately, if the badger in the video was filmed in Yellowstone, it must have had some help because it is a European badger and will have come from several thousand miles away.

The American Badger that does actually live in Yellowstone is a completely different animal. It looks different, it behaves differently and it does not like forests at all. They are animals of open prairie and grassland. If the forests had returned as George states in the video (they haven't by the way) the animal he says benefited would have faced serious loss of habitat.

An American Badger: not like ours at all

Then there is a lovely scene of a bear catching a salmon in the Yellowstone river. At least that's not fake. Bears do live in Yellowstone. They always have. But salmon don't. There are no salmon in the Yellowstone rivers, there never have been, and there never will be. Wherever this illustration of nature's renewed bounty was filmed, it wasn't Yellowstone.

But the beavers did come back thanks to the wolves stopping the elk eating the willows. Didn't they? George says so, and there is film. That's right, isn't it?

Well, partly. The beavers have returned, but mostly in lorries. There is little evidence to suggest that the wolves had anything to do with it. One of the main impacts wolves have on the returning beavers is that they eat them whenever they get the chance. Strangely George skates over the lorries and the eating beaver bits.

Another element of the changes allegedly seen since the wolves return that George skates over is the impact of culling by humans. The herd of elk that the authorities wanted reducing in size does not spend all its time in the National Park. They migrate out every year, and are subject to culling by hunters. At the same time that wolves were released in Yellowstone the hunting season was extended to allow more elk to be killed. At no time since their reintroduction has the number of elk killed by wolves got anywhere near the number killed by humans. George doesn't mention that.

George's grip on what an elk looks like also seems tenuous. The animals in video include quite a lot of elk, but you also see mule deer, pronghorn antelope and almost unbelievably, European fallow deer. Perhaps, they came in on the same flight as the badgers. With a video with an African Fish Eagle illustrating trophic cascades in Wyoming, anything is possible!

There is more, but you will by now see why we think this video reflects reality in a way that makes 'King Kong meets Godzilla' look like a serious documentary.

But what about the central thesis? The idea that Monbiot sells, mixed up in all the fake images. The idea that trophic cascades triggered by wolves changes grass to forest and the course of rivers. Is that fake too? It would be truly awful if it was, because 44,000,000 people have watched it and a lot of them appear to believe it.

The Colorado State University has studied Yellowstone, its wolves and its ecosystems for 20 years. This is what Tom Hobbs, one of the scientists who lead the research said about the George Monbiot theory. 

“Trophic cascade in Yellowstone became true by being told many times and people believed it whether the science was proven wrong or not. I believe that you can't attribute a causal change from wolves to willows in Yellowstone based on the science we have done.”

That is pretty clear. The video is largely fantasy. The thesis it promotes appears to be at best unproven and probably untrue, even in the wilderness of Wyoming. Yet thousands of people will tell you it is true because they have seen it. It is in the video, and you can trust George Monbiot. He is all knowing and tells it as it is. If that's what they believe, it's up to them, but if he can't recognise an African Fish Eagle or, perhaps worse, assumes it does matter because the people he is trying to persuade are too dumb to know the difference, we wouldn't believe a word he says.