The return of the native

Conventional wisdom holds that, of the six species of deer encountered wild in Britain today, only two — the roe and red — are native to these islands. While true on the face of it, that represents only part of the full picture. A considerable proportion of the roe deer emerging at dawn on to a forest ride, or sunning themselves among the drifts of bluebells, bear little or no connection to the roe that roamed the broadleaved forests of Britain 5,000 years ago.

When the ice sheets of the last glaciation retreated and waves of temperate plants and animals moved northwards across the land bridge that then connected Britain and continental Europe, roe were among them. During the ice age, they, along with other deer species, had been confined to ‘refugia’ in the warmer regions of southern and south-eastern Europe, and it was these pioneer animals that became part