Dr Raye eating choccy @LeafyHistory@computerfairi.es

If you traveled back 250-500 years what #wildlife could you see near you? After a four year research project, I can tell you the answer in Britain and Ireland and it is quite exciting! (🐺​🐆​🐰​🦈​​🦐​🐍​)!

My Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife will be published in June, but I have special permission to share some of my findings before that, so I will be releasing one map each month here. Here is a list of previously released ones: https://historyandnature.wordpress.com/2022/12/21/atlas-maps/
#gis

According to my research, the Great Bustard was still pretty well recorded in Britain 250-500 years ago. It was hunted to extinction in the nineteenth century, but has since been reintroduced in Wiltshire.
I wonder if all the birds in the eastern Fen counties got soggy bums! - I don't think they are very waterproof birds! 😹​🦃
(Map from my Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife)​
#extinction #Britishbirds #bustard #ornithology #animalhistory #histodon

Three maps from my ATLAS OF EARLY MODERN WILDLIFE showing where wild animals were recorded in Britain and Ireland 250-500 years ago... ​
I found loads of records of Pine Martens and Otters. So why no records of Beavers from early modern England..?
John Ray (1693) says 'These animals have been cut down by hunters all the way to the final extermination, and their stock in England and Wales is thoroughly extinct...'
Were they already gone?😿​
#beaver #earlymodern #extinct #envhistodons

More new research from me published this month! ​

This is a chapter in the edited volume 'Wolf: Culture, Nature, Heritage' (Boydell Press). My research examines the (vv old!) chancery records of England and found over 200 licences for hunting hares 🐰​, foxes 🦊​, badgers 🦡​, wildcats (🐱​!) and wolves (🐺​!!!) in 13th and 14th century England. The licences are specific so can be mapped like this!

Free copy available here: https://zenodo.org/record/8173432

Hi everyone, today is the day my book, THE ATLAS OF EARLY MODERN WILDLIFE is published. 🙀💚

The Atlas catalogues the state of nature in Britain and Ireland during the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries. 🐺🦫🦅🦃🐳🐟🐢🐍🦞🦐

It's taken me five years to get to this point! The Atlas is based on over 10,000 records from 200+ primary sources (essentially books written in the time period)!

#biodiversity #extinction #wildlife #earlymodern #histodons #AnimalHistory #HistoricalEcology #HGIS #envhist

Amateur naturalists still recorded wolves in the early modern period around Sutherland, and in the west of Ireland, but not England or Wales where they seem to have already gone extinct. 🐺​💔​

But of course, there are legends of wolves living much later than that, and in very different areas! And I have a bit of research coming out later this month which describes what happened when they went extinct in England ​

#AnimalHistory #EarlyModern #wolves #histodons #ecology #mammals

After the Norman Conquests in Britain and Ireland, Rabbits were commonly kept in artificial warrens for meat and fur. 🐇
By the period that I study (250-500 years ago) Rabbits were widespread in England. Strangely though, they still had a mainly coastal distribution around Scotland, Ireland and Wales until much later. ​
Map from my forthcoming book. ​
#Rabbits #mammals #AnimalHistory #EarlyModern #Histodons #ecology

My slow worm friends are out of hibernation!!

250-500 years ago, I have found #frogs were recorded across #earlymodern Britain, but interestingly not Ireland. This is surprising because we normally consider frogs to be native in Ireland! 💚​

Frogs also seem to have been reintroduced to Orkney and the Isle of Man in this period. Unless someone made a mistake, this happened multiple times - it is possible there have been multiple waves of frog #extinction and #reintroduction on these smaller islands! 🐸​​

The Burbot is a sinuous fish with chunky pectoral fins. It was never widespread in Britain and Ireland but I have collected records showing it was found in the east of England 250-500 years ago. It seems to have only gone extinct there around 1970!

In recent years there has been talk by the Norfolk Rivers Trust of reintroducing it, so perhaps it will be back soon!

#EarlyModern #histodons #extinction #fishing #fish #reintroduction #rewilding