Can we please base this on the science rather than what people “feel”?
Culling deer because of a risk of bovine TB is excessive when the risk is considered less than badgers and there is not much evidence of it ever happening here.
> However, in most parts of Ireland there is currently no evidence that deer play a significant role in the spread of bTB to cattle.
By all means cull to control population, but don’t stick disease, biodiversity or road safety in there without some evidence to support your claims.
This is why we need education, training and licenses issued for an ethical cull every year. I lived up in the Wicklow mountains for ~2 years. I would hike every weekend and walk some trails most evenings when it was bright enough. There are large herds of deer all over the place with not nearly enough land to accommodate them. Once the rutting season is done the weaker stags can be pushed away from the herd. Many of these stags, as well as other new herds that need to find their own territory, can be pushed from the more remote mountain locations on to farmers land where they can be shot or, often, caught in fencing where they can potentially starve if not freed. Many, too, are pushed to find space and have to cross roads, regularly ending in painful deaths for them. Better population control would sort this.
> 1,512 submissions were received from farmers, foresters, ecologists, academics, NGOs and public bodies.
> Just over half of the respondents lived in rural areas.
What the fuck? Why are we asking farmers and foresters if they would support deer culling?? OF COURSE THEY DO. And why are we polling this at all? This is a matter for ecological science, not a popularity contest. What a ridiculous state of affairs.
EDIT: while ye’re all busy downvoting, I would love for anyone to identify for me the circumstances under which a farmer – of the type that would be included in this consultation – or forester would NOT be in favour of culling deer.
No shit, anyone involved in land management and ecology has been saying this for +5yrs. The issue is its expensive and somebody has to pay, which generally the government isn’t in favour of unless there’s an immediate fiscal payoff. Improved farm yields probably isn’t enough, increased biodiversity isn’t enough (payment for ecosystem services isn’t a thing yet). The issue of afforestation and the publics obvious inclination for more native woodlands tied in with carbon emission penalties on the horizon might push their hands, but there is a lot of other services (healthcare, housing, infrastructure etc) that are probably priority.
Which means the government will make them a protected species.
Can’t let these things get hijacked after all
Yes deer pose the greatest threat to our biodiversity, lets cull them all, and not question or adequately address the intensification of our agricultural system which does have the greatest effect on biodiversity. Fml.
Ok I live in an area with a high amount of deer population so let’s talk about it for a second. Firstly this was a public consultation in name only it was put out to groups with axes to grind and just want to kill deer. Firstly we have a real issue with hunting in Ireland, where as i’d say about 40% of people who hunt deer are dodgy as fuck with real bad practices, who discharge firearms on property that they are not permitted to shoot on, dump waste and offal on farm land or in gullies, a neighbour of mine was shot last year by a hunter while he was standing in his garden and this was 4 days before hunting season opens. So a big part of the call for the cull is that the deer numbers grew during lockdown cause people couldnt get licenses to shoot them so if there is an actual need for a cull it needs to be done right and efficiently and not by giving out more licenses to Joe soap. Introducing a predator isn’t a bad idea and while I like the idea of wolves for deer management reintroducing lynx would work much better and they would be less inclined to attack livestock. Also we have no other wild large mammals so people calling for wiping them out is fucking stupid yes sika where introduced here but they have been here for hundreds of years and they are now part of the ecosystem and red deer are our last large mammal and we should be proud of their numbers growing instead of selling licenses to fat Americans to go shoot them, this is a real serious issue and needs actual thought behind it but the problem is there will be far too many gobshites leading the charge in this and they are the real danger like nearly half the respondents don’t even live in rural areas so how the fuck would they know anything about it?
Wait, we’re voting on culls now? Can I see the list of nominations?
As someone who spends a lot of time in woodlands and has some woodland myself, deer a certainly a big problem in terms of biodiversity in Ireland. Its true that intensive farming is the biggest threat, and we need to sort that out, but in some ways farming can be isolated from the rest of the landscape (eg grazing cows won’t go in to native woodlands if fenced off unlike deer). In some ways farming isn’t isolated, eg through effluent run off in to rivers etc and we need to tackle that. Deer however know no boundaries, and can’t really be contained. Deer fencing only works on a small scale, perhaps 20acres, its bloody expensive and it doesn’t really solve the issues at a landscape scale.
What’s needed is a landscape scale deer census since we have no accurate idea of how many deer there (it could be 2 million even). Once we know the numbers, a deer management plan can be drawn up and implemented. Yes, lots of deer will need to be culled, maybe more that you might imagine. The cull figure to keep a population stable is 30%, so if there are 1 million deer now in Ireland, we need to cull 300,000 every year to stay where we are. Many more if we want to reduce numbers.
Recreational hunting won’t really get us there, its needs to be professional stalkers paid for by the dept of ag or npws. There are 5500 licensed deer hunters in Ireland, so that would be 55ish animals each per year on average, and its not easy work.
Also, there needs to be Coillte buy in, they own huge amounts of the land where these deer are, and coillte forests are used a sort of staging post to graze in important biodiverse forests. Currently Coillte lease the hunting to recreational hunters, where there is no incentive to reduce numbers (hunters like having things to hunt).
The real problem is these animals have very little land to live on. Farmers saying deer is damaging the biodiversity of their farms is ridiculous, farmland isn’t biodiverse. A bit of verge isn’t doing much for wildlife.
We need more wilderness, I think we should be looking to buy up farmland and turn it into proper wilderness with actual wildlife in it.
Farmers interests and biodiversity don’t align. Currently farmers are making products for a global market which means volume and cutting costs. That’s always going to lead to poor outcomes for our countryside.
Survey sample consisted 86% humans, 14% deers.
Jumping off on a bit of a tangent here – badgers.
So – first a disclaimer – my knowledge of this is only based on Clarkson’s Farm (let he who is without sin etc).
Badgers seem to be a massive TB threat – similar to deers as mentioned in the article – why are badgers a protected species but not, say, deer?
Is it just that there are more limited numbers of badgers in the wild, compared to deer, or that badgers offer additional ecosystem benefits compared to deer?
I have absolutely zero opinion on badgers, just was puzzled with the Clarkson’s Farm portrayal and fully accept that Jeremy Clarkson is not the person to be getting insights on anything from
My grandfather was a hunter in Germany, I guess I’ve just always known but is anyone actually shocked by this? We eradicated most of their normal predators like wolves, so now it’s up to us to keep the scales relatively balanced
17 comments
We should be eating them.
Can we please base this on the science rather than what people “feel”?
Culling deer because of a risk of bovine TB is excessive when the risk is considered less than badgers and there is not much evidence of it ever happening here.
https://www.teagasc.ie/media/website/animals/Wildlife-and-bovine-TB.pdf
> However, in most parts of Ireland there is currently no evidence that deer play a significant role in the spread of bTB to cattle.
By all means cull to control population, but don’t stick disease, biodiversity or road safety in there without some evidence to support your claims.
This is why we need education, training and licenses issued for an ethical cull every year. I lived up in the Wicklow mountains for ~2 years. I would hike every weekend and walk some trails most evenings when it was bright enough. There are large herds of deer all over the place with not nearly enough land to accommodate them. Once the rutting season is done the weaker stags can be pushed away from the herd. Many of these stags, as well as other new herds that need to find their own territory, can be pushed from the more remote mountain locations on to farmers land where they can be shot or, often, caught in fencing where they can potentially starve if not freed. Many, too, are pushed to find space and have to cross roads, regularly ending in painful deaths for them. Better population control would sort this.
> 1,512 submissions were received from farmers, foresters, ecologists, academics, NGOs and public bodies.
> Just over half of the respondents lived in rural areas.
What the fuck? Why are we asking farmers and foresters if they would support deer culling?? OF COURSE THEY DO. And why are we polling this at all? This is a matter for ecological science, not a popularity contest. What a ridiculous state of affairs.
EDIT: while ye’re all busy downvoting, I would love for anyone to identify for me the circumstances under which a farmer – of the type that would be included in this consultation – or forester would NOT be in favour of culling deer.
EDIT 2: Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Bring in the wolves. People call that a harebrained idea, but [they did it in Italy.](https://i.redd.it/aeboobgpdsz51.jpg)
No shit, anyone involved in land management and ecology has been saying this for +5yrs. The issue is its expensive and somebody has to pay, which generally the government isn’t in favour of unless there’s an immediate fiscal payoff. Improved farm yields probably isn’t enough, increased biodiversity isn’t enough (payment for ecosystem services isn’t a thing yet). The issue of afforestation and the publics obvious inclination for more native woodlands tied in with carbon emission penalties on the horizon might push their hands, but there is a lot of other services (healthcare, housing, infrastructure etc) that are probably priority.
Which means the government will make them a protected species.
Can’t let these things get hijacked after all
Yes deer pose the greatest threat to our biodiversity, lets cull them all, and not question or adequately address the intensification of our agricultural system which does have the greatest effect on biodiversity. Fml.
Ok I live in an area with a high amount of deer population so let’s talk about it for a second. Firstly this was a public consultation in name only it was put out to groups with axes to grind and just want to kill deer. Firstly we have a real issue with hunting in Ireland, where as i’d say about 40% of people who hunt deer are dodgy as fuck with real bad practices, who discharge firearms on property that they are not permitted to shoot on, dump waste and offal on farm land or in gullies, a neighbour of mine was shot last year by a hunter while he was standing in his garden and this was 4 days before hunting season opens. So a big part of the call for the cull is that the deer numbers grew during lockdown cause people couldnt get licenses to shoot them so if there is an actual need for a cull it needs to be done right and efficiently and not by giving out more licenses to Joe soap. Introducing a predator isn’t a bad idea and while I like the idea of wolves for deer management reintroducing lynx would work much better and they would be less inclined to attack livestock. Also we have no other wild large mammals so people calling for wiping them out is fucking stupid yes sika where introduced here but they have been here for hundreds of years and they are now part of the ecosystem and red deer are our last large mammal and we should be proud of their numbers growing instead of selling licenses to fat Americans to go shoot them, this is a real serious issue and needs actual thought behind it but the problem is there will be far too many gobshites leading the charge in this and they are the real danger like nearly half the respondents don’t even live in rural areas so how the fuck would they know anything about it?
Wait, we’re voting on culls now? Can I see the list of nominations?
As someone who spends a lot of time in woodlands and has some woodland myself, deer a certainly a big problem in terms of biodiversity in Ireland. Its true that intensive farming is the biggest threat, and we need to sort that out, but in some ways farming can be isolated from the rest of the landscape (eg grazing cows won’t go in to native woodlands if fenced off unlike deer). In some ways farming isn’t isolated, eg through effluent run off in to rivers etc and we need to tackle that. Deer however know no boundaries, and can’t really be contained. Deer fencing only works on a small scale, perhaps 20acres, its bloody expensive and it doesn’t really solve the issues at a landscape scale.
What’s needed is a landscape scale deer census since we have no accurate idea of how many deer there (it could be 2 million even). Once we know the numbers, a deer management plan can be drawn up and implemented. Yes, lots of deer will need to be culled, maybe more that you might imagine. The cull figure to keep a population stable is 30%, so if there are 1 million deer now in Ireland, we need to cull 300,000 every year to stay where we are. Many more if we want to reduce numbers.
Recreational hunting won’t really get us there, its needs to be professional stalkers paid for by the dept of ag or npws. There are 5500 licensed deer hunters in Ireland, so that would be 55ish animals each per year on average, and its not easy work.
Also, there needs to be Coillte buy in, they own huge amounts of the land where these deer are, and coillte forests are used a sort of staging post to graze in important biodiverse forests. Currently Coillte lease the hunting to recreational hunters, where there is no incentive to reduce numbers (hunters like having things to hunt).
The real problem is these animals have very little land to live on. Farmers saying deer is damaging the biodiversity of their farms is ridiculous, farmland isn’t biodiverse. A bit of verge isn’t doing much for wildlife.
We need more wilderness, I think we should be looking to buy up farmland and turn it into proper wilderness with actual wildlife in it.
Farmers interests and biodiversity don’t align. Currently farmers are making products for a global market which means volume and cutting costs. That’s always going to lead to poor outcomes for our countryside.
Survey sample consisted 86% humans, 14% deers.
Jumping off on a bit of a tangent here – badgers.
So – first a disclaimer – my knowledge of this is only based on Clarkson’s Farm (let he who is without sin etc).
Badgers seem to be a massive TB threat – similar to deers as mentioned in the article – why are badgers a protected species but not, say, deer?
Is it just that there are more limited numbers of badgers in the wild, compared to deer, or that badgers offer additional ecosystem benefits compared to deer?
I have absolutely zero opinion on badgers, just was puzzled with the Clarkson’s Farm portrayal and fully accept that Jeremy Clarkson is not the person to be getting insights on anything from
My grandfather was a hunter in Germany, I guess I’ve just always known but is anyone actually shocked by this? We eradicated most of their normal predators like wolves, so now it’s up to us to keep the scales relatively balanced
Also venison is fucking delicious
I’m doing my part.
Would you like to know more?