It was a week for wild things. In the wake of a BBC documentary, the campaign to make the Highlands more attractive by introducing packs of wolves to the glens was once more in the news.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Scotland, an even more exotic creature was spotted in Galloway. Pichu, a rare red panda who escaped from a wildlife park two months ago, was found safe and well, perched “like the Cheshire cat” on the bough of a tree near Kirkcudbright.

Pichu is Asiatic, and there is no record of red Pandas having ever pranced through our ancient Caledonian pines. Still, she survived a Scottish spring by eating berries and lichens. Her cub, Isla, is still missing but presumed alive. Why not just let the daddy panda join them and start a colony? We are not supposed to welcome non-native flora and fauna, but this is the new, enlightened Scotland. Give the pandas asylum, I say.

The extreme conservation lobby insist large, snarling canines are just the thing to boost income from eco-tourism. Cuddly little Pichu and her ilk are surely a safer bet. She doesn't devour lambs, the family dog or small children, being largely herbivorous. Unlike the wolf, she is genuinely endangered. Kazhakstan has 90,000 wolves, Canada 60,000, and their conservation in the United States and Europe is so successful they've had to start shooting them again in some places.

The poor red panda, or “shining cat” is down to just 2,500 adults in its native Himalayas. Tree-felling and scarcity of bamboo are not the worst of it - poachers turn them into luxuriant furry hats for superstitious Chinese bridegrooms.

Gallovidians may inhabit Scotland's forgotten corner, home of the Wickerman festival, but even they don't have such strange wedding customs. So that's one less thing for the red panda to worry about. And the creature will pay its way: red pandas are sedentary animals, lolling around in daytime, perfect for the tourist cameras. Wolves are rarely so obliging.

But it is wolves we are going to get if the landowner Paul Lister, the environmentalist George Monbiot and campaign groups such as Wolves and Humans get their way. Lister, whose family made millions from MFI furniture, wants to create a 50,000-acre reserve in Sutherland with wolves, bears, wild boar and lynx. He has already released breeding moose, which will provide meat for the carnivores, along with the existing red deer. His model is the African safari experience, and he believes his attraction will employ more local people than do traditional grouse moors and shooting estates.

Lister is prepared to invest in Alladale, Sutherland. He is planting 80,000 trees and runs environmental programmes for young people. The marketing is attractive, so it would be churlish to knock someone with a bit of entrepreneurial oomph - particularly since the region has suffered centuries of neglect by lazy lairds.

However, he can only realise his dream if he creates a heathery Jurassic Park, complete with electric fence, and that is contrary to the spirit and letter of Scotland's right-to-roam legislation. There are fears that Lister will eventually charge for access, effectively privatising a massive area of land that Scots previously enjoyed for free.

But the super-conservationists have a counter-argument. They believe the entire Highland region could support wolves, without fences. They point to Yellowstone Park in the US, where the animals were successfully reintroduced in 1995 after years of legal argument.

Since then, however, $500,000 (£253,000) compensation has been paid to ranchers who have lost livestock. Scotland's death toll would be greater - sheep here are free range, whereas they are penned in America.

In the Spanish highlands, where flocks graze much as they do in Scotland, wolves account for 80% of sheep deaths. The suggestion that deer will form the bulk of the Scottish wolves' diet is mere supposition. I'm no scientist, but the stag is more fleet of hoof than the ewe - which would you pursue if you had a clutch of hungry cubs yelping for a feed? Lupine lobbyists deny that wolves attack people. But they do. Afghan villagers keep mastiffs to ward them off. A French shepherd was killed by wolves in 2001, and in 2005 Canada suffered a rare fatality when a student hiker was devoured in northern Saskatchewan.

In Anchorage, Alaska, three female joggers and their dogs were followed by a pack of eight wolves while taking a little aerobic exercise in the suburbs last December - a month that saw seven wolf attacks in the city.

If you set up home in Anchorage, you might see this a something of an occupational hazard. You've learned to live with the risk of ending up a polar bear's breakfast. Besides, the wolves got there first. It's a bit much to expect the good folk of Golspie to take the same buccaneering attitude to personal safety. George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist, who doesn't live in Sutherland, believes the odd mauling is a price worth paying for restoring the thrill of the wild. Conservationists say wolves only attack when they get used to people. But how to avoid them?

The Scottish Highlands is not a vast expanse such as Idaho or Wyoming. It is a comparatively tiny speck of wilderness, and an increasingly crowded one. The rapid growth of outdoor pursuits brings more visitors north each year. How will the wolves deal with that? They might well move closer to camps or go urban like the foxes and seagulls that feast on KFC leftovers. It's bad enough being followed home from the supermarket by a hungry vixen. Imagine a bigger, shaggier version with longer incisors.

Why do these rich visionaries never get passionate about human ecology? They are attracted by “Europe's last great wilderness”. But the desolate glens that hold such romantic appeal are not wild at all. Before the land was cleared of people by an earlier generation of lairds, the straths were cultivated and dotted with settlements, while the higher ground was given to summer pasture. Emptiness is modern and man-made.

These lonely places were once home to a people with a rich oral culture that - unlike the wolf - teeters on the precipice of extinction. The concept of land ownership was alien in Gaelic tribal society. Anyone really interested in restoring the Highlands to their former glory would turn back to those ancient traditions and repopulate the land - with human beings.