Returning space to the wild

Should Ireland be returned to the wild? - The Irish Times - Sat, Jan 19, 2013: "He cites rediscovery of Leinster woods by the great spotted woodpecker and the new spread of buzzards across a more tolerant countryside.

Ireland has virtually no wild habitats, except the strip between the tides (and not always then). Most of the nature we know is a human construct, both in what we’ve added over centuries and – much more often – what we’ve taken away. Even the kind of natural world we might prefer is put together from Victorian books and paintings. The line between ecological repair and much-derided “wildlife gardening” can be lost in a confusion of science and human aesthetics.

At Ireland’s size, we have no room for rewilding: there are far too many deer already, and a few introduced wild boar are now hunted as an “invasive alien species”. Conservationists can argue that bringing back kites and eagles helps to turn people on to nature, respecting and preserving the homes of lesser creatures as well as filling BBs. It heals a few scars from our gamekeepered past while ignoring, too often, the modern rise of predators – mink, rats, foxes, grey crows – that are wrecking the landscape’s natural inheritance of species.

Red kites, meanwhile, once the specialist scavengers of every European city, have been paying a high price for their reintroduction to the northern fringes of Dublin. Following the success of introducing kites from Wales to Wicklow, beginning in 2007, 39 young birds were released in Fingal in 2011 and quickly spread out between the coastal estuaries and Meath. By the end of their first winter, nine of them were dead, most poisoned by rodenticide in rats they had scavenged. Go to the Golden Eagle Trust website ( goldeneagle.ie) for advice on taking greater care.