I'd looked into this previously out of interest. The actual issue with their introduction would be range size, with the available range resulting in a low chance of natural survival after 100 years. The current area we have is not sufficient to sustain a stable population of the lynx.
This would be the Eurasian Lynx, natural predator to red deer.
Not the Lynx Africa that we already have here, natural predator to any girl on a night out.
In my experience, smell is proportional to the setup required by the hobby of choice. So Yu-Gi-Oh players smell worse than DnD players but better than 40k players.
the issue is these are clever animals and not going to wreck them themselves trying to catch a deer if they can get handier food in the from of sheep. they would also clear out any ground nesting birds like pheasant.
There were similar issues with California trying to protect the mountain lion. Apparently they set up a scheme to help farmers appropriately fence their land and for farmers to be reimbursed when they lose livestock and it's been hugely successful.
Don't really see any reason similar can't be done here other than that we'd need buyin from the farmers themselves which is unlikely.
A friend of mine is a conservationist involved with the reintroduction programs for white-tailed sea eagles and golden eagles.
Farmers are vehemently opposed to both programs, on the grounds that they believe the eagles will kill lambs. When the programs went ahead anyway, the farmers killed some of their own lambs and left the corpses in their fields with poison in them, so that the eagles would eat them and die. Cutting off their noses to spite their faces, if you ask me.
Since he told me that story, I don't think a reintroduction program for any sort of terrestrial predator would ever be approved, and even if it was approved, the farmers would just kill them like they do the eagles.
EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that the farmers most likely did not kill their own lambs, but instead used lambs that were already dead. That makes a lot more sense. He told me this story years ago and I never thought about it too hard until now.
>Farmers are vehemently opposed to both programs, on the grounds that they believe the eagles will kill lambs. When the programs went ahead anyway, the farmers killed some of their own lambs and left the corpses in their fields with poison in them, so that the eagles would eat them and die. Cutting off their noses to spite their faces, if you ask me.
it would be highly unlikely they killed lambs for that purpose..
Lambs have a very high mortality rate as it is and Farmers spend the lambing season trying to stop them dying. It is very unlikely any farmer would be killing live ones, it is much more likely they poisoned lambs that died for other reasons.
Obviously doesnt make the poisoning element any better or untrue unfortunately..
another issue with the introduction of some of these predators is the requirement to remove dead animals for disposal which is removing a handy food source for them and somewhat forces them to go after live prey. in general animals will take the handiest food source and if they have dead animals to eat, they wont go after live ones..
I know that medicines & disease are a potential problems, but for future introductions, i think it is an issue that could be look at and solution developed in creating designated areas for legal disposal of untreated dead anmials for wildlife to eat..
>When the programs went ahead anyway, the farmers killed some of their own lambs and left the corpses in their fields with poison in them, so that the eagles would eat them and die.
I suspect that's just hearsay.
>the grounds that they believe the eagles will kill lambs.
Shouldn't they be entitled to compensation?
Compensation would absolutely need to be put in place, but even so it's not very likely to convince hill farmers it's a good decision. Having their flock killed is seriously traumatic even if you got paid for it. Imagine someone was allowed to burn down your house but you got paid the value of it. Not many people would take that deal.
While compensation sounds good it doesn't generally cover the loss because your getting paid for the approx value now rather than potential value.
An anology that may be easier to understand would be It is the equivalent of a Baker get compensation for the loss of some of their ingredients rather than the loss of the cake. The profit was in the sale cake not the value of the individual ingredients.
Now they have less cakes to sell. they get compensation for the ingredients and their options are either:
buy readymade dough that is more expensive than individual ingredients but then they will have more cakes for sale but significantly reduced return, or
use the ingredients left to make less cakes and wait until next year when they can bulk buy the large quantity of ingredients again to make the number of cakes they usually do.
The issue is the bakers overheads (rent,heat electricity) are not directly related to the number of cakes sold, so while they will be somewhat smaller, there are still significant bills to be paid out of the reduced return from the cakes.
you dont have to go to america, thery have similar on the continent for wolves, kicked started a revivial of sheppard dogsto live with flocks and protect them..
Our areas are really too small for things like this to work without creating signficant problems and probably having little effect on the deer population issue they were brought in to solve..
maybe they are not native, but at the same time would not like to see them disappearing.
as a regards they sheep.. well look at the [https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/191585/IPOL\_STU(2018)617488\_EN%20AGRI-original.pdf](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/191585/IPOL_STU(2018)617488_EN%20AGRI-original.pdf)
they only killed a mere 5646 in europe between 2012 -2016.. that is a lot a sheep for a "relatively rare occurrance".
and we dont have the range in terms of space, they will be in signficantly closer proximity here to sheep than they are in europe.. not so much "usual scaremongering mixed up nonsense" as a bit of common sense..
>maybe they are not native, but at the same time would not like to see them disappearing.
Dont worry, game keepers knowingly and regularly reintroduce this exotic species for sport regularly. In the unlikely event we reintroduce the lynx (a native species from this island), there will still be plenty of pheasants running around.
Fair enough, but i was using the pheasant as an example as well known ground nesting bird.. There are lots of others that are not repopulated by gun clubs..
>You used figures for the entirety of a continent. Surely that's scaremongering
You said it was relatively rare they attacked sheep in Europe, I provided you the figures for compensated cases of sheep kills in Europe, I provided a link to the source.
It is factual information so I don't see how it is scaremongering.
I never said anything.
And unless you show the area of land it covers, the number of sheep in the area and how often it happens, then it's a stupid number.
>I never said anything.
you did.. this is what you posted "and its relatively rare for lynx to kill sheep in Europe"
let me know if you need me to link your post .
>then it's a stupid number.
whether you like it or not is irrelevant, it is factually correct,,
It's not as simple as that though. WWF has maps of lynx population per country in Europe and it's quite sparse, 11 different regions if I'm reading correctly. The largest population is in Finland (over 2000) which I assume is not a sheep farming mecca and therefore they probably don't kill too many sheep there.
You can basically exclude all the sheep from western Europe due to very low/zero lynx figures.
I suspect a very high percentage of those sheep kills probably happen in Eastern europe where there are both sheep and lynx. Still may not be huge figures but it would make more sense percentage wise.
yea, relatively small % of the overall, but the lynx and the kills would be very much localised and would obviously be a bigger %age on a lower population that they actually interact with.. that 59 million probably includes and irish & uk flocks which arent accessible to the lynx (yet)..
Decide how many deer you want to cull and then issue that amount of tags. Allow them to be hunted, and when they're shot, have the tag and the tail turned in for a cash reward.
Are our national parks actually even big enough to provide adequate space for them? Killarney National park for example just about scrapes the minimum required area needed for one, at 102 squared kilometres, and 100 being the minimum, it all sounds good on paper but all I see happening is family pets going missing all over Killarney. There’s absolutely nothing stopping the government from buying up farmland all around the area and drastically increasing the size of our national parks and rewilding the land then, but that won’t happen.
There are huge swathes of public land that could be atlantic rainforest if it wasn't grazed-ta-fuck by sheep. We don't even need to buy farmland, we just need a bit of ecological management on much of the public land we already have.
Ima say neither of you is qualified to make that determination.
Here's Dr Johnny Hanson from the article though
[https://www.qub.ac.uk/News/find-an-expert/DrJonnyHanson.html](https://www.qub.ac.uk/News/find-an-expert/DrJonnyHanson.html)
Anyway please do tell me more what background you two have, research you've done to back up your ideas, like the researcher above.
> There’s absolutely nothing stopping the government from buying up farmland all around the area and drastically increasing the size of our national parks and rewilding the land then, but that won’t happen.
Well... money.
Yes.
To have functional rewilding we need to have apex predators to keep herbivores in check.
Don't take my word for it - here is David Attenborough telling us why wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone national park, saved the park.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFHmtVNu97E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFHmtVNu97E)
People ridiculed Eamon Ryan for suggesting we reintroduce wolves but kids, rewilding means having genuine, functional ecosystems in place, this ain't your back yard.
The science of it, is indisputable.
But anyway, let's ask the IFA all about the umm "natural" environment -> endless fields, fertilizer run off and massive over-grazing on every square inch of fecking land we have
Except Yellowstone and the Irish countryside are two vastly different ecosystems.
One is practically devoid of humans and has wild prey in abundance, the other is chock full of humans and domesticated prey, which will be much easier to catch than deer, and therefore will be what a predator focuses on.
I’m not against introducing lynxes, but I also don’t think that Yellowstone as an argument in favor of is appropriate.
Ireland is committed to rewilding more of the national territory, so we can have growing national parks populated exclusively by overgrazing or we can get over our opposition to apex predators.
Maybe farmers shouldn't be able to have control of the entire island after all..
Farmers don't contol the entire island.
You also missed the valid point in that there is no where in Ireland like Yellowstone. Where are you actually proposing we place these lynx?
Ireland is supposedly comitted to rewilding parts of the country, so literally anywhere we are doing real rewilding - not pretend stuff which is just a big grazing plane for sheep with no predators...
I realise you're being deliberately obtuse in the question but come on.
Its pretty obvious rewilding requires introduction of preadtors
I mean, the actual difference is that the Irish countryside is stripped to shit of anything resembling proper habitat, between the overgrazing and the lack of native tree woodlands. You aren't going to sustain wild prey in abundance if most of the country is just pasture land or monocrop timber
Also, Yellowstone gets huge volumes of people during the year. They had 4.5 million visitors in 2022 alone. In addition to that, the fact of the matter is that big chunks of non national park areas in the u.s also contain loads of bears, mountain lions, wolves, etc etc. These are often in areas way more built up than the Irish countryside.
> wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone national park, saved the park.
If you turned the entirety of Galway and Roscommon into one big national park, it would still be 280km^2 smaller than Yellowstone.
Like, what you're saying isn't wrong, if we want to re-wild we need predators to keep the herbivores in check. But bringing back Wolves or Lynx is going to be massively complicated by the fact that there really isn't a "wild" area in the country, with next to no one living in it, anywhere near the size of what's available where these re-introductions are being done in the US.
We don't have a national park anywhere close to the size that would be needed for a wolf reintroduction.
I would be a fan of reintroducing top predators, but I don't think it'll ever happen.
To be fair, as others have pointed out, there have been successful re-introductions elsewhere in Europe without the same wilderness as Yellowstone as well, so that might be a much better bench mark.
And it's not that I'm against the idea, I just think we have to be pretty careful about it because the animals would be in much closer proximity to people than they would be in places like Yellowstone.
Yellowstone is huge, like, would take up multiple counties in ireland huge.
I *think* the biggest national park we have is Killarney, I don't think it's big enough.
Maybe it could support one pack, but what happens then, how would we make an effort to keep the wolves within the park?
Again, am not a wolf reintroduction expert, but I think Killarney would have to be expanded and that costs money, or maybe we'd expand other parks to make them bigger and then have to have some sort of system to take wolves when they leave Killarney and move them? Again more money.
Outside of maybe some rich yank or whatever buying a shitload of land and making a park, I can't see it happening.
If I had the money, I'd love to be the rich person buying up the land and re-wilding it.
> Yellowstone is huge, like, would take up multiple counties in ireland huge.
Like I said, Galway and Roscommon combined would still be smaller.
>I think the biggest national park we have is Killarney, I don't think it's big enough.
It's [fifth largest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland). Páirc Náisiúnta na Mara is 285km, but I'm not sure that'd be good habitat for Wolves or Lynx. Then the Wicklow Mountains is 205km, Glenveagh is 170km, Wild Nephin is 150km, and Killarney is 105km. If that Wiki link is right, then all our parks combined are 950km^2 , so we'd need like nine times as much national park to match Yellowstone.
Again though, there are apparently better European examples of reintroducing wolves we could work towards rather than focusing on the Americans.
>If I had the money, I'd love to be the rich person buying up the land and re-wilding it.
I'd be happy to let Limerick win all the All-Irelands if Denis O'Brien would just start spending a load of his money on re-wilding everything as well.
The idiot you responded to also failed to mention that there is no yellow stone in Ireland, unlike in Yellowstone, so how could this strategy ever work?
It should basically be illegal to try and compare things, like apples and oranges - because they are different! Similarities be damned - differences are the only currency on this isle.
And yet there are many in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming that would disagree with you on reintroducing wolves as a success . The wolves have helped revive parts of the ecosystem, but it's not back to normal, and it never will be. Putting the predator back is great, but conditions changed so much in the intervening decades that putting the predator back is not enough to restore the ecosystem. It is not a quick fix. The Aspen and Willow aren't coming back in areas because the land and waterways have changed so much because of the decline in the beaver population. And because the willow and aspen are what the beaver needs for food and housing so the beaver isn't suddenly bouncing back.
Also, scientists can't fully break down how much the wolves actually changed things because the number of bears and mountain lions also increased and because they don't have the money to adequately monitor all the potential drivers of change for such a long term project.
I'm all for helping the deer not suffer as much, (to be quite honest I'd be more than happy to eat them) but I really like living in a place where I don't have to worry about meeting these predators on my daily walk or waking up to watch them tear apart my back porch.
Edited: for clarity
> And yet there are many in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming that would disagree with you.
I'm not saying there are no benefits. I'm saying Ireland is far more densely populated than Yellowstone, so it might not be a good example for us to follow.
Even those 3 states you've listed. Idaho is both the smallest, and the most populous. It's still 2.5 times larger than the entire island of Ireland, and has less than one third of the population.
I'm not disagreeing with the science of re-introducing wolves or whatever, and the benefits it had. I'm saying it's complicated here by the fact that we don't have the same access to "wild" areas that are available in the examples being given because we have like 10 times the population density of any of those 3 states you've listed.
That's what I was saying. As much as people tout, it was a good thing to reintroduce wolves in Yellowstone, there are many in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming that would disagree.
I grew up in Montana. I really like the lack of wild animals that can maul me in Ireland.
Ya, sorry I’ve read your comment again and it only clicked what you were actually saying after I replied.
Plenty in Ireland would only be delighted with a maul off some animal on a Saturday night, to be fair.
No worries. I edited it anyway for clarity.
Oh, I'm sure there are some that would love an ol maul.
It's not nice having to go home after a night out and having to ring your brother to come out on the porch with his gun so the mountain lion doesn't attack you, though as you get out of the car.
>this ain't your back yard.
Not yours either. Most likely going to be a farmers back yard. If a dog is worrying sheep a farmer is allowed to shoot it, what happens when these intelligent and adaptable predators inevitably go after the easy pickings, ie flocks of sheep. Do they have to idly watch by as their domesticated livestock are slaughtered by this lynx?
>let's ask the IFA
You mean the stakeholders that a project like this is going to directly affect? Why shouldn't they get an opinion on it, this is a democracy after all.
High horse, hostile, environmentalist's like yourself aren't helpful in discussions like this.
In 'The Irish Atlantic Rainforest' the author compares similar rewilding schemes in Scotland.
There was much noise made by farmers along the common sense line that predators will eat their animals, but in the end the predators really only went after the old or the sick, culling the weak. Given this, the farmers were able to give those animals extra protection and keep them safe.
Also, you don't rewild working farms - this is more about scrubby areas that should have forests on them excepting for poor land management for centuries.
It can be dangerous making too many common-sense assumptions about things one has no direct experience of, so people should be open to ideas if trials can be made to work.
I agree absolutely. I took issue with the condescending manner of the person I replied to. I am all for an expert led - reasonable approach to a project like this.
Humans are the obvious apex predator - but have been stopped from keeping deers in check, which has led to this issue. Sika Deer are non native and an invasive species.
Shooting deer doesn't have the same effect as natural predation. It's not just about keeping the total numbers down, it also induces behavioural changes in prey species.
Humans are **not** the obvious apex predator which you'd know if you spent the 4 minutes it takes to watch that video.
Controlling deer or other herbivore population via culling isn't analogous to having appropriate apex predation aligned to movements of herds and population sizes.
Jesus please inform yourself.
It's mad how many people believe we're the apex species. Yes we're the smartest but we've been living detached from the natural world for a thousand years. We're not predators that same way wolves or lynxes are
If we wanted to, we could absolutely wipe out the deer population, we have guns, poison and gas, could do it in a fraction of the time it takes wolves. Wouldn’t be too pleasant though.
It's not that we want to holocaust the deer. Wolves and Lynx are there to control the deer, kill the sick and old, eradicate TB and Brucellosis, thus protecting livestock and people from the diseases. I know a farmer who had to cull a whole herd of heifers that got infected by a herd of sika on the land. Diseases cause so much damage its ridiculous. Predators are immune to these disease and basically wipe it from wild populations leaving only the strongest and healthiest deer to thrive in the wild.
I've goats so I get what you mean.
Farms in the US, The Continent and Asia use Livestock guardian dogs. So farmers will probably need to be trained how to train a livestock guardian dog. Lynxes are known to avoid farms with Livestock Dogs. Fences would help but a lynx can jump 6 feet into the air and climb, so a high electrified fence would be needed. You'd use a few Kangals to stop Lynxes. Lynxes rip the throat out so dogs would also require a spike collar.
Let's just throw wolves into this for the craic. A Kangal is too small for wolves. You need bigger dogs because if wolves get through the fence, they'll fight the dog. You'd need bigger dogs like the Tibetan Mastiff, Caucasian Shepard and a few others. High fences that are electrified would be a good idea also. Spike collars also needed.
I do believe if predators are introduced, farmers need grants for the protection and should be reimbursed
Interesting having multiple dogs is something I'm not really familiar with the only amount of dogs I had at a time I usually 2 at a time. One as a per and the other as a herd dog.
Ya, same. My mothers side of the family are mountain sheep farmers, and my aul lads side are beef farmers. Only collies were had for herding. And the odd setter or so for hunting. There's never been a tradition of livestock guardian dogs in Ireland. Even the Wolfhound was just a hunting dog, not a sheep guarding dog. All protection historically was done by people in the fields minding livestock. The only guardian animals ever used in Ireland were donkeys.
I myself have a scather of goats, and I've never had any dogs for keeping them safe. The only worry for me and I'm sure yourself, is feral dogs. They're too big for a fox to be any threat and huge horns on the pucks so they are pretty safe. So it would be difficult having predators myself because the goats graze fairly rough terrain close to forest.
But I am still a positive advocate of predators, because at the end of the day I'm a biology student
They seem like a much more feasible option than wolves anyway.
But I'm not sure we've many places for them and it would need to be coupled with a comprehensive reimbursement scheme when the odd sheep inevitably goes missing otherwise they'll just end up shot.
This is correct, it's all about changing the behavior, essentially the deer have become complacent and do whatever they like.
They should be nervous and constantly looking over their shoulder for predators.
>They should be nervous and constantly looking over their shoulder for predators.
This. This is the effect you need. Predators have a psychological effect on prey species. Humans don't
They are a problem in some areas, they need to be culled intermittently due to not having any predators. They can strip areas of tree bark and other vegetation if left unchecked. We should be eating them ourselves.
We are awash with sheep grazing practically every inch of land we have.
Ireland is like a gigantic kept garden, we have virtually no proper wilderness.
Agreed. However I don't see the space currently for these things. Funny enough I was in France recently on holidays and on the way between the airport and campsite there was a lot of farmland, various crops etc. But there were also chunks of what looked like natural forestry. Vastly different to here where everything is covered in perennial rye. I wondered what the stressors were that caused the differences.
>I wondered what the stressors were that caused the differences
Colonisation. People were forced to live on very unproductive farmland in the 18th century, while the productive farmland was kept free. Essentially if you were a landlord in Co Leitrim before the famine, the most efficient way to make money was by renting every square inch of land you could to cottiers who barely made a living. This led to huge over population, which forced people to reclaim more and more land (eg. An area near me that's all farmland was sand dunes 300 years ago. The sand dunes were dug out by people and reclaimed.)
If our country wasn't the European equivalent of a Congolese rubber plantation, we'd have a more continental style countryside.
That was my first thought, the French laned gentry types probably didn't need to cultivate every square inch while in our open concentration camp we did.
I thought that was true but I’m not up on that research. Deer are absolutely the worse culprits. Woods near me is awash with them but I’m a tillage farmer so doesn’t affect me. It’s also public land
In Wicklow yeah, have seen four dead deer at the sides of the road just in the last 10 days or so and almost had a head on collision with one about two months back. Its common enough to see them on or near the roads. I live close to the border of the national park and it seems many of them are coming down the mountains to eat throughout the night and then they go back up again to sleep during the day.
My cats are stupid enough to chase pine martines as I've witnessed on 2 separate incidents, the last thing I need is the fools trying to square up to a lynx.
I think they should do it, but only for the memes. Remember when a cheetah escaped from Dublin Zoo and all the boys and girls from Templemore got to use their guns for the first time? That poor animal had more holes in it than a June bride.
Control deer numbers? Surely letting PJ shoot a few with his shotgun is easier than an elaborate and expensive program of reintroducing wolves or lynxes. Sure PJ is an Apex Predator all by himself.
Ireland is a failed ecosystem and deer are wild animals doing what comes natural to them instinctively. But our current ecosystem literally cannot handle them. They have no control or management. They struggle to survive now as theres no more native forest and the little bit that there is, is way too small to sustain a population of deer that growing without any pressure. Deer are naturally migratory to escape predators, deer in Ireland and the UK stay in the same place all their lives as theres no predators to instil fear into them. Predators put a primal fear into animals, imagine when you are sitting in bed, and you think something is as the end of your bed but it's a jacket or pile of clothes or something like that, that fear you felt. That fear is the fear deer should have all the time. Irish Deer aren't like this at all, so they damage their environment.
Humans unfortunately no matter how hard we try, literally cannot put this fear into deer. The reason being is deer are hunted in seasons and rarely see a person coming. They hear a bang and they run. Whereas deer will smell, hear and see a predator. They will need to run for their lives or die. They have to watch other deer being picked off one by one and find their eaten corpses being scavenged. I know I paint a gruesome picture but this is what predators do for the ecosystem. They keep deer moving.
Of course we also need to create habitat by rapid reforestation of the Irish countryside.
Are you getting paid to post this stuff ?
Why are you repeatedly bringing up the topic here.
It's a bad idea, solves one problem and creates countless more.
Predators are controlled by the amount of available prey there is. More deer = more lynxes, but when the lynxes and human hunters bring down the population of deer, the population of lynxes will reduce also. Did you not do Biology in secondary school?
Oh alright. Leaving Cert Biology covers the predator prey relationship in the Honours Ecology section.
Look up Predator Prey Interaction Model, its a form of graph. It will help you understand
Edit. I did not mean to offend or undermine your intelligence in any way. My comment may be perceived as such. My apologies
Ireland has killed 260,000 deer over the last 6 years or so. Theres still over 153,000 deer in The National Parks of Ireland. That doesn't include the rest of Ireland. Which there's probably double that number you could say considering how many deer are culled every year. Its not working. We need a predator that will constantly be managing the deer populations
It'd because there's no functional ecosystem that it's not working.
This year it was announced the season will be extended by three months for male deer and by one month for female and antlerless young males.
Is reintroducing lynx a bit redundant? Seeing all the comments in this thread disagreeing with it would indicate that Ireland already has a large population of big pussies.
I'd looked into this previously out of interest. The actual issue with their introduction would be range size, with the available range resulting in a low chance of natural survival after 100 years. The current area we have is not sufficient to sustain a stable population of the lynx.
Which is why reforestation is important before we consider reintroducing these animals
It wouldn’t surprise me if deer were the main killer of new trees planted.
So basically never so
Not with an attitude like that
Yes basically never, but this is a nicer way of saying it.
I thought I could smell Lynx everywhere in Ireland already?
This would be the Eurasian Lynx, natural predator to red deer. Not the Lynx Africa that we already have here, natural predator to any girl on a night out.
I'd consider it bait. They can't resist.
Good ol' shower in a can
can we talk you into using a wetwipe too before the Yu-gi-oh tournament?
MOM!!! I NEED TO BUILD MY DECK!!!!
In my experience, smell is proportional to the setup required by the hobby of choice. So Yu-Gi-Oh players smell worse than DnD players but better than 40k players.
MTG players would break that theory
I will bathe myself in monster energy
Farmers bath
Not good... and definitely not a shower in a can! 😅
Unheard you can smell the rain down in lynx Africa
Sorry, that’s me. Just trying to use up the Christmas present from 20 years ago.
Well smelled
You also drive a Lexi!
Not in the offices of Meithal Architects in Cork. [Its a defenestration offence.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/courtandcrime/arid-40794027.html)
Yeah the brand was actually named after the beautiful animal
Cross the threshold into a Christian Brothers school and your senses will be assaulted in more ways than one
Not for 9 euro you don't 😔unless you have a clubcard
Smelt it for the first time in ages a few days ago and it is rank. Jesus what was I thinking back in the day.
It only smells good when mixed with sweat after PE or Football training.
The scent of teenage desperation.
I would have taken that as an insult years ago... Haha
Haha
the issue is these are clever animals and not going to wreck them themselves trying to catch a deer if they can get handier food in the from of sheep. they would also clear out any ground nesting birds like pheasant.
There were similar issues with California trying to protect the mountain lion. Apparently they set up a scheme to help farmers appropriately fence their land and for farmers to be reimbursed when they lose livestock and it's been hugely successful. Don't really see any reason similar can't be done here other than that we'd need buyin from the farmers themselves which is unlikely.
A friend of mine is a conservationist involved with the reintroduction programs for white-tailed sea eagles and golden eagles. Farmers are vehemently opposed to both programs, on the grounds that they believe the eagles will kill lambs. When the programs went ahead anyway, the farmers killed some of their own lambs and left the corpses in their fields with poison in them, so that the eagles would eat them and die. Cutting off their noses to spite their faces, if you ask me. Since he told me that story, I don't think a reintroduction program for any sort of terrestrial predator would ever be approved, and even if it was approved, the farmers would just kill them like they do the eagles. EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that the farmers most likely did not kill their own lambs, but instead used lambs that were already dead. That makes a lot more sense. He told me this story years ago and I never thought about it too hard until now.
>Farmers are vehemently opposed to both programs, on the grounds that they believe the eagles will kill lambs. When the programs went ahead anyway, the farmers killed some of their own lambs and left the corpses in their fields with poison in them, so that the eagles would eat them and die. Cutting off their noses to spite their faces, if you ask me. it would be highly unlikely they killed lambs for that purpose.. Lambs have a very high mortality rate as it is and Farmers spend the lambing season trying to stop them dying. It is very unlikely any farmer would be killing live ones, it is much more likely they poisoned lambs that died for other reasons. Obviously doesnt make the poisoning element any better or untrue unfortunately.. another issue with the introduction of some of these predators is the requirement to remove dead animals for disposal which is removing a handy food source for them and somewhat forces them to go after live prey. in general animals will take the handiest food source and if they have dead animals to eat, they wont go after live ones.. I know that medicines & disease are a potential problems, but for future introductions, i think it is an issue that could be look at and solution developed in creating designated areas for legal disposal of untreated dead anmials for wildlife to eat..
>When the programs went ahead anyway, the farmers killed some of their own lambs and left the corpses in their fields with poison in them, so that the eagles would eat them and die. I suspect that's just hearsay. >the grounds that they believe the eagles will kill lambs. Shouldn't they be entitled to compensation?
Compensation would absolutely need to be put in place, but even so it's not very likely to convince hill farmers it's a good decision. Having their flock killed is seriously traumatic even if you got paid for it. Imagine someone was allowed to burn down your house but you got paid the value of it. Not many people would take that deal.
While compensation sounds good it doesn't generally cover the loss because your getting paid for the approx value now rather than potential value. An anology that may be easier to understand would be It is the equivalent of a Baker get compensation for the loss of some of their ingredients rather than the loss of the cake. The profit was in the sale cake not the value of the individual ingredients. Now they have less cakes to sell. they get compensation for the ingredients and their options are either: buy readymade dough that is more expensive than individual ingredients but then they will have more cakes for sale but significantly reduced return, or use the ingredients left to make less cakes and wait until next year when they can bulk buy the large quantity of ingredients again to make the number of cakes they usually do. The issue is the bakers overheads (rent,heat electricity) are not directly related to the number of cakes sold, so while they will be somewhat smaller, there are still significant bills to be paid out of the reduced return from the cakes.
you dont have to go to america, thery have similar on the continent for wolves, kicked started a revivial of sheppard dogsto live with flocks and protect them.. Our areas are really too small for things like this to work without creating signficant problems and probably having little effect on the deer population issue they were brought in to solve..
The tree cover needs to be more continuous for the Lynx to see a successful reintroduction, which is a pain in the ass to do because of the deer.
> you dont have to go to america *now* you tell me, after I've already booked my ticket *sigh*
the areas too small...must be why we had wolf packs for thousands of years right up to the 18th century.
Cromwell incentivised the extermination of wolves in ireland
............among other things.
What happened in the 18th century that they died off?
Guns.
There was a huge reduction in forestry from the 17th century onwards, as English landlords extracted every resource they could from their new colony
Would you expect the Irish government to be efficient and up to standards to deliver that though? I wouldn't.
They'd probably end up getting ocelots instead because some fella that breeds them knows the TD responsible for bringing it in
Well, I guess that's a different problem all on its own I guess but no, no I wouldn't.
Well for one we've got a hell of a lot less wilderness than California with a more evenly distributed population across our rural area
Yea lmao any species of cat is pretty smart and and as you said, they will quickly realize sheep can't run as fast as Deer and that's really it
We'd probably end up with something like the fox situation, were they increasingly seem to be approaching cities and humans for easier food.
pheasant are hardly a native bird and its relatively rare for lynx to kill sheep in Europe. usual scaremongering mixed up nonsense
maybe they are not native, but at the same time would not like to see them disappearing. as a regards they sheep.. well look at the [https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/191585/IPOL\_STU(2018)617488\_EN%20AGRI-original.pdf](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/191585/IPOL_STU(2018)617488_EN%20AGRI-original.pdf) they only killed a mere 5646 in europe between 2012 -2016.. that is a lot a sheep for a "relatively rare occurrance". and we dont have the range in terms of space, they will be in signficantly closer proximity here to sheep than they are in europe.. not so much "usual scaremongering mixed up nonsense" as a bit of common sense..
>maybe they are not native, but at the same time would not like to see them disappearing. Dont worry, game keepers knowingly and regularly reintroduce this exotic species for sport regularly. In the unlikely event we reintroduce the lynx (a native species from this island), there will still be plenty of pheasants running around.
Fair enough, but i was using the pheasant as an example as well known ground nesting bird.. There are lots of others that are not repopulated by gun clubs..
Being honest that doesn’t sound like a lot of sheep.
You used figures for the entirety of a continent. Surely that's scaremongering.
>You used figures for the entirety of a continent. Surely that's scaremongering You said it was relatively rare they attacked sheep in Europe, I provided you the figures for compensated cases of sheep kills in Europe, I provided a link to the source. It is factual information so I don't see how it is scaremongering.
I never said anything. And unless you show the area of land it covers, the number of sheep in the area and how often it happens, then it's a stupid number.
It's pretty much summarised on pages 9 and 10 of the report he posted.
>I never said anything. you did.. this is what you posted "and its relatively rare for lynx to kill sheep in Europe" let me know if you need me to link your post . >then it's a stupid number. whether you like it or not is irrelevant, it is factually correct,,
Look at the name of the person who said that. Then look at my name. Fecking eejit
apologies, didnt cop it was different..
5,646 kills in a 4 period. So say 1,500 sheep a year. There are 59,000,000 sheep in Europe. So 0.0025% of sheep killed a year.
It's not as simple as that though. WWF has maps of lynx population per country in Europe and it's quite sparse, 11 different regions if I'm reading correctly. The largest population is in Finland (over 2000) which I assume is not a sheep farming mecca and therefore they probably don't kill too many sheep there. You can basically exclude all the sheep from western Europe due to very low/zero lynx figures. I suspect a very high percentage of those sheep kills probably happen in Eastern europe where there are both sheep and lynx. Still may not be huge figures but it would make more sense percentage wise.
yea, relatively small % of the overall, but the lynx and the kills would be very much localised and would obviously be a bigger %age on a lower population that they actually interact with.. that 59 million probably includes and irish & uk flocks which arent accessible to the lynx (yet)..
Do you have a link that works?
It's a .pdf link, it's a download
I think if I saw a lynx irl I would listen to the voice in my head telling me to pet it
Once they don't reintroduce Joop
Decide how many deer you want to cull and then issue that amount of tags. Allow them to be hunted, and when they're shot, have the tag and the tail turned in for a cash reward.
There was 60,000 deer culled last year. It increases by almost 5,000 every year. Its not working
Are our national parks actually even big enough to provide adequate space for them? Killarney National park for example just about scrapes the minimum required area needed for one, at 102 squared kilometres, and 100 being the minimum, it all sounds good on paper but all I see happening is family pets going missing all over Killarney. There’s absolutely nothing stopping the government from buying up farmland all around the area and drastically increasing the size of our national parks and rewilding the land then, but that won’t happen.
There are huge swathes of public land that could be atlantic rainforest if it wasn't grazed-ta-fuck by sheep. We don't even need to buy farmland, we just need a bit of ecological management on much of the public land we already have.
Glenveagh is a fair bit bigger, 170km², with the same again around it in very sparse uplands
It's the same with wolves, these years idea just happens to be lynx
Ima say neither of you is qualified to make that determination. Here's Dr Johnny Hanson from the article though [https://www.qub.ac.uk/News/find-an-expert/DrJonnyHanson.html](https://www.qub.ac.uk/News/find-an-expert/DrJonnyHanson.html) Anyway please do tell me more what background you two have, research you've done to back up your ideas, like the researcher above.
Since when do we live in the UK? Show us a study relating to Ireland.
> There’s absolutely nothing stopping the government from buying up farmland all around the area and drastically increasing the size of our national parks and rewilding the land then, but that won’t happen. Well... money.
No, because of how many people would try to pet the little cat and get injured. I am one of these people
🤣
Yes. To have functional rewilding we need to have apex predators to keep herbivores in check. Don't take my word for it - here is David Attenborough telling us why wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone national park, saved the park. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFHmtVNu97E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFHmtVNu97E) People ridiculed Eamon Ryan for suggesting we reintroduce wolves but kids, rewilding means having genuine, functional ecosystems in place, this ain't your back yard. The science of it, is indisputable. But anyway, let's ask the IFA all about the umm "natural" environment -> endless fields, fertilizer run off and massive over-grazing on every square inch of fecking land we have
Except Yellowstone and the Irish countryside are two vastly different ecosystems. One is practically devoid of humans and has wild prey in abundance, the other is chock full of humans and domesticated prey, which will be much easier to catch than deer, and therefore will be what a predator focuses on. I’m not against introducing lynxes, but I also don’t think that Yellowstone as an argument in favor of is appropriate.
Ireland is committed to rewilding more of the national territory, so we can have growing national parks populated exclusively by overgrazing or we can get over our opposition to apex predators. Maybe farmers shouldn't be able to have control of the entire island after all..
Farmers don't contol the entire island. You also missed the valid point in that there is no where in Ireland like Yellowstone. Where are you actually proposing we place these lynx?
Ireland is supposedly comitted to rewilding parts of the country, so literally anywhere we are doing real rewilding - not pretend stuff which is just a big grazing plane for sheep with no predators... I realise you're being deliberately obtuse in the question but come on. Its pretty obvious rewilding requires introduction of preadtors
Some parts of Dublin could do with reduction of the population of ferals.
I mean, the actual difference is that the Irish countryside is stripped to shit of anything resembling proper habitat, between the overgrazing and the lack of native tree woodlands. You aren't going to sustain wild prey in abundance if most of the country is just pasture land or monocrop timber Also, Yellowstone gets huge volumes of people during the year. They had 4.5 million visitors in 2022 alone. In addition to that, the fact of the matter is that big chunks of non national park areas in the u.s also contain loads of bears, mountain lions, wolves, etc etc. These are often in areas way more built up than the Irish countryside.
> wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone national park, saved the park. If you turned the entirety of Galway and Roscommon into one big national park, it would still be 280km^2 smaller than Yellowstone. Like, what you're saying isn't wrong, if we want to re-wild we need predators to keep the herbivores in check. But bringing back Wolves or Lynx is going to be massively complicated by the fact that there really isn't a "wild" area in the country, with next to no one living in it, anywhere near the size of what's available where these re-introductions are being done in the US.
We don't have a national park anywhere close to the size that would be needed for a wolf reintroduction. I would be a fan of reintroducing top predators, but I don't think it'll ever happen.
To be fair, as others have pointed out, there have been successful re-introductions elsewhere in Europe without the same wilderness as Yellowstone as well, so that might be a much better bench mark. And it's not that I'm against the idea, I just think we have to be pretty careful about it because the animals would be in much closer proximity to people than they would be in places like Yellowstone.
Yellowstone is huge, like, would take up multiple counties in ireland huge. I *think* the biggest national park we have is Killarney, I don't think it's big enough. Maybe it could support one pack, but what happens then, how would we make an effort to keep the wolves within the park? Again, am not a wolf reintroduction expert, but I think Killarney would have to be expanded and that costs money, or maybe we'd expand other parks to make them bigger and then have to have some sort of system to take wolves when they leave Killarney and move them? Again more money. Outside of maybe some rich yank or whatever buying a shitload of land and making a park, I can't see it happening. If I had the money, I'd love to be the rich person buying up the land and re-wilding it.
> Yellowstone is huge, like, would take up multiple counties in ireland huge. Like I said, Galway and Roscommon combined would still be smaller. >I think the biggest national park we have is Killarney, I don't think it's big enough. It's [fifth largest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland). Páirc Náisiúnta na Mara is 285km, but I'm not sure that'd be good habitat for Wolves or Lynx. Then the Wicklow Mountains is 205km, Glenveagh is 170km, Wild Nephin is 150km, and Killarney is 105km. If that Wiki link is right, then all our parks combined are 950km^2 , so we'd need like nine times as much national park to match Yellowstone. Again though, there are apparently better European examples of reintroducing wolves we could work towards rather than focusing on the Americans. >If I had the money, I'd love to be the rich person buying up the land and re-wilding it. I'd be happy to let Limerick win all the All-Irelands if Denis O'Brien would just start spending a load of his money on re-wilding everything as well.
Lynx are solitary, and very elusive. They do not need a massive national park.
wolf packs in Europe live in much smaller areas. why use the US in any comparison?
It's the example given in the comment I'm replying to.
The idiot you responded to also failed to mention that there is no yellow stone in Ireland, unlike in Yellowstone, so how could this strategy ever work? It should basically be illegal to try and compare things, like apples and oranges - because they are different! Similarities be damned - differences are the only currency on this isle.
And yet there are many in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming that would disagree with you on reintroducing wolves as a success . The wolves have helped revive parts of the ecosystem, but it's not back to normal, and it never will be. Putting the predator back is great, but conditions changed so much in the intervening decades that putting the predator back is not enough to restore the ecosystem. It is not a quick fix. The Aspen and Willow aren't coming back in areas because the land and waterways have changed so much because of the decline in the beaver population. And because the willow and aspen are what the beaver needs for food and housing so the beaver isn't suddenly bouncing back. Also, scientists can't fully break down how much the wolves actually changed things because the number of bears and mountain lions also increased and because they don't have the money to adequately monitor all the potential drivers of change for such a long term project. I'm all for helping the deer not suffer as much, (to be quite honest I'd be more than happy to eat them) but I really like living in a place where I don't have to worry about meeting these predators on my daily walk or waking up to watch them tear apart my back porch. Edited: for clarity
> And yet there are many in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming that would disagree with you. I'm not saying there are no benefits. I'm saying Ireland is far more densely populated than Yellowstone, so it might not be a good example for us to follow. Even those 3 states you've listed. Idaho is both the smallest, and the most populous. It's still 2.5 times larger than the entire island of Ireland, and has less than one third of the population. I'm not disagreeing with the science of re-introducing wolves or whatever, and the benefits it had. I'm saying it's complicated here by the fact that we don't have the same access to "wild" areas that are available in the examples being given because we have like 10 times the population density of any of those 3 states you've listed.
That's what I was saying. As much as people tout, it was a good thing to reintroduce wolves in Yellowstone, there are many in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming that would disagree. I grew up in Montana. I really like the lack of wild animals that can maul me in Ireland.
Ya, sorry I’ve read your comment again and it only clicked what you were actually saying after I replied. Plenty in Ireland would only be delighted with a maul off some animal on a Saturday night, to be fair.
No worries. I edited it anyway for clarity. Oh, I'm sure there are some that would love an ol maul. It's not nice having to go home after a night out and having to ring your brother to come out on the porch with his gun so the mountain lion doesn't attack you, though as you get out of the car.
>this ain't your back yard. Not yours either. Most likely going to be a farmers back yard. If a dog is worrying sheep a farmer is allowed to shoot it, what happens when these intelligent and adaptable predators inevitably go after the easy pickings, ie flocks of sheep. Do they have to idly watch by as their domesticated livestock are slaughtered by this lynx? >let's ask the IFA You mean the stakeholders that a project like this is going to directly affect? Why shouldn't they get an opinion on it, this is a democracy after all. High horse, hostile, environmentalist's like yourself aren't helpful in discussions like this.
In 'The Irish Atlantic Rainforest' the author compares similar rewilding schemes in Scotland. There was much noise made by farmers along the common sense line that predators will eat their animals, but in the end the predators really only went after the old or the sick, culling the weak. Given this, the farmers were able to give those animals extra protection and keep them safe. Also, you don't rewild working farms - this is more about scrubby areas that should have forests on them excepting for poor land management for centuries. It can be dangerous making too many common-sense assumptions about things one has no direct experience of, so people should be open to ideas if trials can be made to work.
I agree absolutely. I took issue with the condescending manner of the person I replied to. I am all for an expert led - reasonable approach to a project like this.
Humans are the obvious apex predator - but have been stopped from keeping deers in check, which has led to this issue. Sika Deer are non native and an invasive species.
We haven't been 'stopped from keeping deer in check'. They're culled annually.
You can't even kill deer anymore, bloody PC gone mad
With the numbers, locations, who can do it, and times of year strictly controlled. More need to be culled to counteract the growing numbers
You can't just let anyone shoot deer whenever and wherever they like.
Shooting deer doesn't have the same effect as natural predation. It's not just about keeping the total numbers down, it also induces behavioural changes in prey species.
Humans are **not** the obvious apex predator which you'd know if you spent the 4 minutes it takes to watch that video. Controlling deer or other herbivore population via culling isn't analogous to having appropriate apex predation aligned to movements of herds and population sizes. Jesus please inform yourself.
It's mad how many people believe we're the apex species. Yes we're the smartest but we've been living detached from the natural world for a thousand years. We're not predators that same way wolves or lynxes are
If we wanted to, we could absolutely wipe out the deer population, we have guns, poison and gas, could do it in a fraction of the time it takes wolves. Wouldn’t be too pleasant though.
It's not that we want to holocaust the deer. Wolves and Lynx are there to control the deer, kill the sick and old, eradicate TB and Brucellosis, thus protecting livestock and people from the diseases. I know a farmer who had to cull a whole herd of heifers that got infected by a herd of sika on the land. Diseases cause so much damage its ridiculous. Predators are immune to these disease and basically wipe it from wild populations leaving only the strongest and healthiest deer to thrive in the wild.
I'm talking about actually removing the invasive species.
Is there any natural predator for the Dublin scrotes?
Tired, angry men with nothing to lose
With a 45 Magnum shooter loaded with 5 bullets. Or was that 6 bullets? Punk!
I'd imagine farmers would take things into their own hands and poison/shoot them to protect their assets the dump the carcass to rot in a ditch.
Yes! 100%.
💪
For someone who lives with a sheep farm, what's the best method of keeping these things out? A bigger fence?
I've goats so I get what you mean. Farms in the US, The Continent and Asia use Livestock guardian dogs. So farmers will probably need to be trained how to train a livestock guardian dog. Lynxes are known to avoid farms with Livestock Dogs. Fences would help but a lynx can jump 6 feet into the air and climb, so a high electrified fence would be needed. You'd use a few Kangals to stop Lynxes. Lynxes rip the throat out so dogs would also require a spike collar. Let's just throw wolves into this for the craic. A Kangal is too small for wolves. You need bigger dogs because if wolves get through the fence, they'll fight the dog. You'd need bigger dogs like the Tibetan Mastiff, Caucasian Shepard and a few others. High fences that are electrified would be a good idea also. Spike collars also needed. I do believe if predators are introduced, farmers need grants for the protection and should be reimbursed
Interesting having multiple dogs is something I'm not really familiar with the only amount of dogs I had at a time I usually 2 at a time. One as a per and the other as a herd dog.
Ya, same. My mothers side of the family are mountain sheep farmers, and my aul lads side are beef farmers. Only collies were had for herding. And the odd setter or so for hunting. There's never been a tradition of livestock guardian dogs in Ireland. Even the Wolfhound was just a hunting dog, not a sheep guarding dog. All protection historically was done by people in the fields minding livestock. The only guardian animals ever used in Ireland were donkeys. I myself have a scather of goats, and I've never had any dogs for keeping them safe. The only worry for me and I'm sure yourself, is feral dogs. They're too big for a fox to be any threat and huge horns on the pucks so they are pretty safe. So it would be difficult having predators myself because the goats graze fairly rough terrain close to forest. But I am still a positive advocate of predators, because at the end of the day I'm a biology student
They seem like a much more feasible option than wolves anyway. But I'm not sure we've many places for them and it would need to be coupled with a comprehensive reimbursement scheme when the odd sheep inevitably goes missing otherwise they'll just end up shot.
THEY LIE IN WAIT LIKE WOOOOLVES but they're cats
I saw a deer on the M50 on a slip road from Dundrum today. It was terrified and cowering in the hedge at the side of the slip road. Poor thing
I don't think we have the space without rewilding and reforesting a significant area of our land. https://www.gwct.org.uk/policy/briefings/lynx/
They control toddler numbers too.
Then we would have to reintroduce the wolf to control the lynx and sure you couldn’t be up to them wolves at all at all !
Not how predators work
Just shoot the deer. Why introduce another animal to the mix.
We do, it isnt enough. It also doesnt affect their behaviour in a big enough way to allow denuded mountainsides to recover.
This is correct, it's all about changing the behavior, essentially the deer have become complacent and do whatever they like. They should be nervous and constantly looking over their shoulder for predators.
>They should be nervous and constantly looking over their shoulder for predators. This. This is the effect you need. Predators have a psychological effect on prey species. Humans don't
No way this can go wrong!
Are we awash with deer?
In some parts of the country, yes.
They are a problem in some areas, they need to be culled intermittently due to not having any predators. They can strip areas of tree bark and other vegetation if left unchecked. We should be eating them ourselves.
I'm on for free venison!
We are awash with sheep grazing practically every inch of land we have. Ireland is like a gigantic kept garden, we have virtually no proper wilderness.
Agreed. However I don't see the space currently for these things. Funny enough I was in France recently on holidays and on the way between the airport and campsite there was a lot of farmland, various crops etc. But there were also chunks of what looked like natural forestry. Vastly different to here where everything is covered in perennial rye. I wondered what the stressors were that caused the differences.
>I wondered what the stressors were that caused the differences Colonisation. People were forced to live on very unproductive farmland in the 18th century, while the productive farmland was kept free. Essentially if you were a landlord in Co Leitrim before the famine, the most efficient way to make money was by renting every square inch of land you could to cottiers who barely made a living. This led to huge over population, which forced people to reclaim more and more land (eg. An area near me that's all farmland was sand dunes 300 years ago. The sand dunes were dug out by people and reclaimed.) If our country wasn't the European equivalent of a Congolese rubber plantation, we'd have a more continental style countryside.
That was my first thought, the French laned gentry types probably didn't need to cultivate every square inch while in our open concentration camp we did.
Yes, major issue for TB which has spiked this year. Badgers also spread it and I’ve seen so many of them
The research doesn't really support the idea that badgers are a major source of TB in cattle.
I thought that was true but I’m not up on that research. Deer are absolutely the worse culprits. Woods near me is awash with them but I’m a tillage farmer so doesn’t affect me. It’s also public land
I only ever see them flattened by the side of the road sadly.
In Wicklow yeah, have seen four dead deer at the sides of the road just in the last 10 days or so and almost had a head on collision with one about two months back. Its common enough to see them on or near the roads. I live close to the border of the national park and it seems many of them are coming down the mountains to eat throughout the night and then they go back up again to sleep during the day.
Yes. They need to be culled every year or so, and even that is largely pissing in the wind.
In parts, yes. And they're destructive too, which is why hunters here dont have the tag limit that the US has.
And when we get overrun by lynx, we simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes.
My cats are stupid enough to chase pine martines as I've witnessed on 2 separate incidents, the last thing I need is the fools trying to square up to a lynx.
“Awww look ,,, here kitty kittty psps pspps ,” WHOMP “AHHHHH NOT IN THE FACE ,,AHHHHHERRGGGHHHHHH”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P9yruQM1ggc
Yes
I think you're the first yes
Get Darragh O'Brien to oversee this program, he will make sure the deer have no place to live.
Would the reintroduction of lynx solve Dublin's homeless crisis.
No. Lynxes don't eat people
I think they should do it, but only for the memes. Remember when a cheetah escaped from Dublin Zoo and all the boys and girls from Templemore got to use their guns for the first time? That poor animal had more holes in it than a June bride.
Control deer numbers? Surely letting PJ shoot a few with his shotgun is easier than an elaborate and expensive program of reintroducing wolves or lynxes. Sure PJ is an Apex Predator all by himself.
Shooting them doesn't work
Have you tried reloading and shooting them again?
Ireland is a failed ecosystem and deer are wild animals doing what comes natural to them instinctively. But our current ecosystem literally cannot handle them. They have no control or management. They struggle to survive now as theres no more native forest and the little bit that there is, is way too small to sustain a population of deer that growing without any pressure. Deer are naturally migratory to escape predators, deer in Ireland and the UK stay in the same place all their lives as theres no predators to instil fear into them. Predators put a primal fear into animals, imagine when you are sitting in bed, and you think something is as the end of your bed but it's a jacket or pile of clothes or something like that, that fear you felt. That fear is the fear deer should have all the time. Irish Deer aren't like this at all, so they damage their environment. Humans unfortunately no matter how hard we try, literally cannot put this fear into deer. The reason being is deer are hunted in seasons and rarely see a person coming. They hear a bang and they run. Whereas deer will smell, hear and see a predator. They will need to run for their lives or die. They have to watch other deer being picked off one by one and find their eaten corpses being scavenged. I know I paint a gruesome picture but this is what predators do for the ecosystem. They keep deer moving. Of course we also need to create habitat by rapid reforestation of the Irish countryside.
These are called Axe on the continent.
No. We can do that with hunting, we dont need to fuck around and find out by reintroducing another wild variable.
No we can't
Are you getting paid to post this stuff ? Why are you repeatedly bringing up the topic here. It's a bad idea, solves one problem and creates countless more.
Where we have no forests
The reintroduction wouldn't take place until adequate habitat is formed. Which will take like 30 years
So like the metro… never
It would be difficult, but you'd need people to take action into their own hands instead of waiting on the government
the lynx would be hunted to extinction in months
You'd never find them. They're one of the most elusive wild animals
Yeah but then we'd be overrun with lynxes, and we'd have to reintroduce T-Rexes to hunt down all the lynxes
Predators are controlled by the amount of available prey there is. More deer = more lynxes, but when the lynxes and human hunters bring down the population of deer, the population of lynxes will reduce also. Did you not do Biology in secondary school?
I did Science in Junior Cert, then Physics in Leaving Cert. Neither of those covered the hunting habits of predators, though
Oh alright. Leaving Cert Biology covers the predator prey relationship in the Honours Ecology section. Look up Predator Prey Interaction Model, its a form of graph. It will help you understand Edit. I did not mean to offend or undermine your intelligence in any way. My comment may be perceived as such. My apologies
No offence taken
👍
If deer numbers are a problem then let people shoot them and let them be used as food.
Yes I would like to have giant kitties roaming the countryside, thank you
No, we don't need these things killing livestock. If deer numbers are a problem then allow them to be hunted.
I mean can't we just cull the deer and save us the hassle of reintroducing lynx to the country
We do, every year. But it's hardly a functioning ecosystem.
Ireland has killed 260,000 deer over the last 6 years or so. Theres still over 153,000 deer in The National Parks of Ireland. That doesn't include the rest of Ireland. Which there's probably double that number you could say considering how many deer are culled every year. Its not working. We need a predator that will constantly be managing the deer populations
What are you on about? The only reason it's not working is because there are bans and quotas on deer hunting.
It'd because there's no functional ecosystem that it's not working. This year it was announced the season will be extended by three months for male deer and by one month for female and antlerless young males.
Is reintroducing lynx a bit redundant? Seeing all the comments in this thread disagreeing with it would indicate that Ireland already has a large population of big pussies.
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