ABSTRACT
British imperial culture was, in many senses, a recovery of classical models that sought the civilisation of wildness rather than its glorification, and this was born out by British enthusiasm for the acclimatisation movement in the nineteenth century. In Australia for example, there was an audacious reordering of nature where (choice) imported species were cultivated and favoured in place of (inferior) indigenous species (Franklin 2012; Ritvo 2010). Since the Romano-British period, British nature was steadily added to – a process that accelerated considerably after the sixteenth century (Thomas 1983) – without much in the way of reaction or reversal. Another possibility is that this alleged desire for big cats is misplaced or
simply wrong. Perhaps, they really are there and a belief is sustained through regular sightings of them. This is clearly the case for the large cluster of sightings recorded for the remote Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire during the 2000s. These also remained speculative and ‘mythic’ until, under a Freedom of Information request to the Forestry Commission (FC), it was ‘revealed by the scientists that the government agency confirmed that two “reliable” sightings of large cats have taken place in the last seven years’ (Woodward 2009). Why were they not reported in the proper way? Could it possibly be because the Forest of Dean is a major commodified leisure facility and an important investment of the FC? They know that people are actually sensible: they don’t want big cats in the forests where their children come to learn and play. The ‘longing for the wild’ thesis is problematic because it rests too much on
reported sightings and newspaper accounts and places too much emphasis on their urban origins. In Hurn’s (2009) case a different story emerged because instead of using sightings as primary data, she embarked on a qualitative investigation in the area where they were seen. In this case, the sightings could be related to beliefs and knowledge that only made sense once they were placed in their wider social and historical context (see also Hurn, this volume). It begged the question as to whether this was a one-off or whether similar results might be found if a similar investigation were conducted elsewhere.
