The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) report has recommended that the government set a target of net-zero greenhouse gases by 2050.

According to the report Net Zero, achieving this, will involve a radical re-think in farming practices and changes to how the British population live, including eating less meat. It will also bring significant changes for the countryside, from agricultural practices to conservation.

The call has been welcomed by wildlife groups, which believe that taking measures to mitigate climate change go hand in hand with reviving the UK’s biodiversity. The CCC says that increasing 32,000 hectares of woodland is required every year for the next 30 years, moving the UK from 13% to 17% woodland cover. This equates to a million new hectares of woodland cover and some 1.5 billion trees.

“There is a potential win-win here,’ said Beccy Speight, CEO of the Woodland Trust.  “It is essential to address the climate and natural environment crises together – recognising them as being interconnected and not two separate challenges. Woods, trees and their associated wildlife and the landscapes in which they sit are being impacted by climate change.”

Farm leaders fear an escaped lynx may have struck, killing seven sheep a week after it went missing from a wildlife park in Ceredigion.

Horrified sheep farmer Owen Jenkins found seven of his sheep dead and a number of others traumatised after spotting the lynx lurking near his flock on Wednesday (1 November).

The Eurasian lynx, named Lilleth, escaped from Borth Wild Animal Kingdom, in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion a week ago. Police warned livestock farmers to stay vigilant amid concerns the animal could attack their animals.

The National Sheep Association (NSA) said the killings bear all the hallmarks of a lynx attack.

NSA chief executive Phil Stocker said it was deeply concerning as the lynx is the same species proposed by the Lynx UK Trust in its application to Natural England to “rewild” medium-sized wild cats at Kielder Forest, in Northumberland.

George Monbiot’s rewilding manifesto has attracted wide media coverage, a new pressure group Rewilding Britain was launched, and the core ideas have been framed and validated in a raft of academic papers. If 2015 is to go down in history as the year when a 21st century conservation mind-set took form, then 2016 needs to be a year of ambition, a year when rewilding talk is transformed into strategies for action.

At its core rewilding envisions the restoration of ecosystem processes through reassembly of large animal populations, either through the reintroduction of lost species or their domestic analogues. In my mind this is a vision for our times, one that chimes with numerous trends in science and society – from the desire to connect ecology with the rise of Earth Systems science to the sense that UK nature is lacking in excitement. From a policy perspective, rewilding is a radical vision. This is because it represents a new paradigm that shifts the focus of conservation from composition (conserving units of nature in place) to function (reconstructing relationships between species in their ecological contexts). Introducing large free-ranging herbivores and carnivores to existing reserves would change the composition of species with uncertain outcomes thereby contravening the rational for their designation. Furthermore, the de-domestication of cattle or reintroduction of species such as boar and wolf rubs up against a raft of wider legislation relating to animal welfare, biohazards and public access and safety.

Campaigning for the animal’s return, the Lynx UK Trust says that there was an overwhelming 91 per cent positive reaction when gauged public opinion on the idea earlier this year.

It is now suggesting trial reintroduction sites in Aberdeenshire, Argyll, Northumberland, Cumbria and Norfolk but before doing so is launching a national stakeholder consultation on what returning lynx will mean for Britain.

Areas under discussion will be the impacts on UK ecology as well as farming and tourism. Stakeholders invited to take part include landowners, farmers, gamekeepers and conservation groups who will be asked to give their opinions to Scottish Natural Heritage and Natural England who would sanction any lynx release.

As part of the process, the Lynx Trust will be releasing details about the logistics of the release and the various impacts the animals will have on life in the UK.

It says research shows lynx are no threat to people and are “little to no threat for pets or livestock”. By contrast, lynx are likely to deliver benefits for forestry and crop farming as well as creating substantial eco-tourism and job opportunities.

Lynx UK Trust chief scientist Dr. Paul O’Donoghue said: “We’re incredibly excited to start discussing the details with stakeholders.

“Lynx reintroduction is a big step for all of us in the UK and this is the opportunity for a wide range of groups to really understand what it could mean, how they could be affected, and to tell us and the statutory agencies how they feel about it.

“I began my walk on the Alladale Estate in Sutherland. At 28,000 acres, it comprises two valleys, Glen Alladale and Glen Mor. From the summit of the highest peak, Meall nam Fuaran, at 674m (2211ft), you can see the sea both ways. Paul Lister purchased the land in 2003. When he announced in 2007 that he intended to fence in Alladale and reintroduce two wolf packs, he generated the sort of media furore that most campaigns can only dream of. There was a  six-part BBC documentary – headlines called him the wolf man, and howling mad. But Lister is clear in his vision. “It’s carnivores that are needed to manage deer numbers,” he says. “Trees aren’t out of control in Scotland. Deer are.”

There is debate as to the extent that the forests of Caledonia once stretched. While both climatic and human factors contributed to their demise, it is deer that are preventing their return. Each tree I saw as I walked south was memorable for its scarcity, a single birch on a rocky outcrop, a clutch of rowan on an island in the river, each in some inaccessible spot where it had been protected from the nibbling.

A similar problem, caused by elk, was the reason behind the reintroduction of the wolf into Yellowstone National Park in 1995. How Wolves Change Rivers, narrated by journalist George Monbiot, was one of the more unlikely videos to go viral last year, now watched by more than 20 million people. Bringing back the wolf to Yellowstone, he claims, not only reduced elk numbers, but it kept them skittish and on the move, allowing for further regrowth of the trees.

Local MSP Robert Gibson sees people, not wolves, as “the most endangered species of all” in his constituency, as the young move south for education and employment. “This is a Clearances landscape,” he says, referring to the eviction of tenants to make way for sheep in the 18th and 19th Centuries, resulting in Scotland having one of the highest concentrations of land ownership in the world.

“Many people look at these expansive views and call them beautiful,” says Alan Watson Featherstone, looking out over the remote hillsides north of Loch Ness. “But what we’ve really got is a barren landscape that is almost entirely devoid of native woodlands and predators. It is frozen in time.”

Mr Featherstone is a leading advocate of rewilding – a strand of the conservation movement with ambitious plans to revive the biodiversity of rural Britain by reintroducing native species. He wants to see the return of birch, oak, Scots pine and aspen across the Highlands but his plans don’t end with flora.

If the rewilders have their way, wild boar, lynx and even wolves could soon be restored to sylvan Britain, where they once roamed more than 1,000 years ago.

“What we’ve done here, and across much of rural Britain, is to allow herbivores [deer, sheep and cattle] to run wild, destroying flora and fauna,” he says. “At the same time, we’ve hunted all their natural predators to extinction.”