Should wolves be reintroduced to Ireland?

LionelNashe wrote: »

Here's an article about reintroducing a small number of bears and wolves in an enclosed forest in the UK.



If we had a large area of enclosed forest, which I presume we don't, that might be a way to do it.

10,000 sq metres the article says. That is not a large area of enclosed forest that is only 1 hectare or 2.471 acres in farming terms you would stock two and a half cows to that on a well run system.

No

Why would introducing another predator to the environment be a good idea??

What animals would then become prey & maybe suffer declining population issues?


Sure while we are reintroducing animals that died out we might as well go and introduce dinosaurs

I don't suppose we have any islands big enough and with suitable woodland/habitat for wolves? I don't think we have.

daheff wrote: »

and when the wolves run out of deer....who do you think will be coming into the towns looking for food?


I think the people of killarney would prefer to face a deer than a wolf.

If the wolves start running out of deer, which is very unlikely because there are 10s of thousands of them, then we cull a few wolves.

Reports this morning that our esteemed Taoiseach made a reference he’d be sooner bringing wolves back to Ireland than having sf in govt.

Pretty disappointing he is seeking to drag politics into what is an ecological issue. Wolves SHOULD be reintroduced. No need to do cheap political jibes about it.

Can someone explain to me how this would be even possible in this country? There's no wilderness and farmers have grazing rights on the open hills and mountains so Wolves wouldn't last a few years before being wiped out.

Time to get with the real world, dreamers. As much as I'd love such a thing, in this country it's just not feasible. Look at the re-introduction of the eagles ffs!

On the continent, people co exist with wolves, wild boar, bears even.

Here, apart from tiny isolated scraps of national park, there is literally nowhere for wolves to go. So unless you rewild vast swathes of land it's completely pointless reintroducing wolves.

And we drop over food to the island Jurassic park style?

The level of stupidity in this thread is high and also full of “nimby”. There are a million other things that could be discussed that would be a better use of resources for the environment etc.

The advantage to this thread though is reminding the average person how **** stupid Eamonn Ryan is.

A pack of Wolves need a fairly large territory , the sparser the prey the larger the territory ,

You'd need a good few packs to get any genetic diversity, so it couldn't just be introduce a pack into Donegal , you'd prob need minimum 8 or 10 packs throughout the country ,

There are plenty of deer at the moment as prey ,( if they were avoiding humans and their domesticated animals ) which could lead to a boom in wolf packs , then as the deer and bunnies got scarcer the packs would have to go looking for farmed animals ..

I am really not getting the population / lack of countryside argument. Wolves somehow survive in the Netherlands, Belgium and very industrial and populated North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. There's absolutely no real non farmed wilderness in the Netherlands, NRW and Belgium (red circle in the below image).

Population density per km2

NRW: 524 (Germany as a whole: 240)

Belgium: 383

The Netherlands: 508

Ireland: 72

Country illustration through light population:

There are people everywhere in Ireland and livestock. Could be problematic. Belgiums population is something like 96% urban I believe. Deer are increasing but eating more venison would be a good solution.

However there's only sheep grazing on that land because farmers run sheep there. They are not wild sheep that need to be checked by an apex predator. If overgrazing was seen as the problem the sheep would simply be rounded up and removed from the land.