Reintroduction of species

Whispered · 05-04-2010 12:54am #1

I was at the museum in Collins Barracks on saturday, they have some of the displays from the natural history museum there for the time being. We were standing at the wolf, and I'm sure I overheard a man say that they were considering reintroducing wolves to certain areas to deal with surplus rabbit & deer populations.

Now, while he did sound like he knew what he was on about, he may well have been just trying to impress his mate with his vast knowledge

I googled and an old thread from Environmental issues came up. A few bits from wiki and a link to politics.ie which I can't open but which mentions in the introduction on google "118324 proposal reintroduce wolf Ireland". From what I can gather, it's being serously considered in Scotland.

Does anyone know if this is a serious proposal? What would the consequences be (besides hysteria from certain people). If people will not accept the reintroduction of the golden eagle due to a precieved threat to livestock, then I can't see the wolf being reintroduced without a lot of hassle and many killings.

Most importantly, what would it mean for my camping holidays. :eek:

Victor · 05-04-2010 4:59am

It seems that wolves tend to be rather shy around humans. Attacks by healthy wolves on humans are exceptionally rare. However, one needs to be careful in introducing a predator into an ecosystem.

The problem with deer is that all the hunters want to take the stags for their antlers, when control would be much better served by the taking of does. One stag and two does reproduce much faster than two stags and one doe.

There is also the matter of sheep. While there are many low density areas of Ireland, there are very few areas that are completely unpopulated.

thehairyone · 05-04-2010 5:28pm

Here's an interesting article on wolves in Ireland;

http://www.ucd.ie/gsi/pdf/33-2/lupus.pdf

It's written by Dr. Kieran Hickey of NUI Galway who has researched Irish wolves. His research page (if you are interested if his other wolf articles) can be accessed here;

http://www.nuigalway.ie/geography/staff/hickey.html

There are currently no plans for wolves to be reintroduced to Ireland. The man you overheard was obviously confused at best or as you say just trying to impress his friend.

There is no way wolves will be introduced into the wild in Ireland in the forseeable future. As you say farmers would not have it, which is fair enough as wolves would be a threat to their livestock.

As can be seen by the eagle poisoning cases, Irish people are just not ready to live with large apex predators. It may take a couple of generations and more environmental/ecological teaching in our primary schools for things to change.

Also the money that would be needed for a project such as wolf reintroduction would be enormous, and with the NPWS budget slashed significantly by the Green Minister, IMO there are more deserving/important wildlife projects that should be implemented first.

As for Scottish wolves, here is an interesting article on BBC News;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6310211.stm

There are no official plans yet for reintroducing wolves in Scotland but there does appear to be support for it. There is a man who owns an estate in the highlands somewhere who wants/wanted to introduce wolves into a large enclosed area to roam free and hunt deer. However, I heard there are legal issues with this, in that if the area has a fence it would be technically classified as a zoo and it is illeagal for animals to hunt other animals in zoos. Animal cruelty issues. All this is from memory so I could be corrected.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 06-04-2010 8:42am

Rest easy. There are no plans whatsoever to re-introduce Wolves here. We do not have sufficiently large wild spaces for even a small pack. Lots of talk among those who are not in the know but it will not happen.

UltimateMale · 06-04-2010 3:54pm

Victor wrote: »

It seems that wolves tend to be rather shy around humans. Attacks by healthy wolves on humans are exceptionally rare. However, one needs to be careful in introducing a predator into an ecosystem.

The problem with deer is that all the hunters want to take the stags for their antlers, when control would be much better served by the taking of does. One stag and two does reproduce much faster than two stags and one doe.

There is also the matter of sheep. While there are many low density areas of Ireland, there are very few areas that are completely unpopulated.

I believe that the very few attacks on humans have come from stray dogs joining the pack and since they have been more used to humans in their earlier days are less inhibited to attack a human.

doctor evil · 06-04-2010 9:10pm

Better use of money removing invasive non-native animals and plants.

rob308 · 06-04-2010 9:40pm

Victor wrote: »

The problem with deer is that all the hunters want to take the stags for their antlers,

This is a totally untrue statement and I resent the fact that you can sit there and label the majority of hunters who put their time into management plans with the minority of the so called trophy hunters only out for antlers. I would totally agree that we would be better off if we were rid of these types.

Reintroduction of species

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