Wildlife in depression, C.1870–1940^149persecuted, and hunts often restricted their activities to merely capturing the
unfortunate beasts, when numbers locally fell low.^56
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as we have seen,
landowners had established exotic plants in their parks and pleasure
grounds, and on occasions more widely on their estates. From the later
nineteenth century, they seem to have taken an increasing interest in exotic
fauna. At Tring in Hertfordshire Lionel Walter Rothschild, who succeeded
to the immense family fortune (derived from banking) in 1915, and who was
a keen naturalist, famously filled the park with zebras, emus, kangaroos,
wallabies, and ostriches (Figure 28).^57 None seem to have escaped but the
edible dormouse (Glig glis) – released into the park in 1902 – did manage
to get out and, although it has not since spread far, is now well entrenched
in the Chiltern Hills.^58 Other introductions have been more successful. The
grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) was released into the park at Henbury in
Cheshire in 1876, and subsequently on a number of estates, most notably
Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, apparently for no other reason than that
it looked attractive and exotic.^59 There may have been earlier releases, in
Kent in 1850 and at Dunham, also in Cheshire, in 1860. Large landowners
took the lead in all this but they were not entirely responsible: four squirrels
from Woburn were released in Kew Gardens, and no less than 91 in Regents
Park.^60 The animal spread steadily through the countryside at a rate of
around a mile a year and by 1930 was established across much of England.^61
A temporary reduction in numbers in the early 1930s, caused by disease,
figure 28 Kangaroos in the park at Tring, Hertfordshire, in c.1900. The late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an increasing interest in keeping exotic
fauna on the part of the landed elite. Many species introduced into parks subsequently
escaped into the wild, with disastrous consequences.