Mucking in Rewilding first sees dung beetles back in fields

In a forest clearing filled with cowpats, French history is being made: the country's first translocation of dung beetles in a nature reserve near Bordeaux

- Patrick Greenfield

With the same pomp and ceremony afforded to the release of an Iberian lynx or a European bison, about 60 "ball rolling" insects were brought to the marshy forests of Étang de Cousseau in south-west France last week to restore a vital ecosystem function on the Atlantic coast.

The dung beetles (scarabaeus laticollis) will feast on the waste produced by dozens of wild cattle that roam the dunes, moors and marshes of the rewilding project, recycling nutrients into the soil.

The insects disappeared from the region in the 1960s as the feral cattle population declined. The last herd of free-roaming marine landaise breed was saved from the slaughterhouse by conservationists in the late 1980s. Before the creation of vast pine plantations under Napoléon III, this area of Gascony was famous for its pastoralism, and shepherds would tend to their flocks on 1.5-metre wooden stilts, with dung beetles thriving on the waste.

Now, along with the wild cattle, the dung beetles are back.