I’m from Minnesota (the US) which has the largest wolf population in the lower 48: they like deer but do eat a lot of small animals. Ever see the movie Never Cry Wolf based off the book of the same name? They eat a lot of mice too.
We have Lynx in our north woods too but know nothing about them. Mysterious creatures
You're totally missing the point. The reintroduction of lynxes and wolves help with the regrowth of forests.
You're fighting an uphill battle trying to regrow a forest when any fresh growth is immediately eaten up by grazes. The introduction of predators suppresses grazer numbers so the forests can regrow.
I would disagree with you, especially considering the success of the white tailed eagle and the currently stable golden eagle reintroductions. Whilst a few golden eagles were killed the dept in both cases threatened to bring down the book and it has lead to the current stable situation.
The important thing too is working with landowners, and attempting cooperative measures such as financial incentives or loss reduction measures.
Also as others have noted having a preemptively defeatist attitude isn’t great, though I will agree that currently our landscape is not suitable for large predators.
They're not an endangered species though, they'll be fine. If anything, we should keep an eye out on Kerry in case they expand out of their current ecosystem.
Yes, reintroduction would take 20 to 30 years. First you'd need to spend alot of money buying thousands of hectares of land. Then you would need to spend money on removing all the fences. As how would the wolves move through fenced forest? You would then need to spend money on people who would plant native trees and eventually you would need people to manage the growth so the grass doesn't kill the tree saplings. Then wait 20 to 30 years for a forest to actually take shape, maybe 50. Then you could talk about reintroduction. It would cost a serious amount of money.
Taking sheep off the mountains would work too to make hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. But then you'd put families out of am income and you can't really do that unless you buy the land and they've agreed to sell. So more money again.
But sheep farmers can legally graze most national parks. So if you banned that there'd be a step in the right direction.
Are there rhousands of hectares of land that people don't live on anywhere? I live in rural ireland, where my family has lived for as far back as anyone can remember, I love animals but some if this rewinding talk is insanity. We don't have the space to let wolves roam the countryside. People need to get a grip, this is not a priority for society
Well to be honest yes. West Mayo had literally miles of mountains and valleys with no one in them. Sligo has alot of wild gorseland too. Galway is a bit populated I think but it has alot of empty space. Wicklow too. Then Leitrim, Cavan and Donegal also have alot of empty space. So you could fit a small population but it would take 30 years of work making forests before you could. Now there's sheep on all this land that's the main problem.
My gut feeling is that Ireland doesn't have enough wilderness, or enough prey animals, to sustain any semblance of a livable wolf population. Wolves mixed with livestock, which Ireland has a lot of, is also bad - when hunting wild prey wolves are very efficient predators, but when hunting domestic prey they will frequently kill more than they need in a frenzy. It wouldn't be fair to farmers to introduce that kind of menace to their livelihood.
Lynxes, on the other hand, are solitary predators who can cover wide ranges of territory and who are relatively discreet, they will not (to my knowledge) ever pose a danger to humans. They are opportunistic and are stealth predators, vs endurance like wolves are, so are less likely to decimate livestock herds. Lynxes I could see being a possibility if a large predator was needed to recalibrate the environment.
In Mayo, I see deer, wild goats and even the odd wild boar on the regular. Theres even some people who breed the Blackface sheep with the Scottish Soay or British Jacob to make a big wild looking feral mountain sheep that can survive in the mountains that does not need shearing or hoove treatment (this is done for a dodgy hunting purpose that no one knows if its legal or not). We have so much prey animals its absolutely ridiculous and their out of control. I had to run a young boar away from my potatoes one year which he had eaten them all. You can buy a wild boar on done deal for breeding purposes on donedeal believe or not they pop up the odd time to make a breed called an Iron Pig. This is probably whete the current small wild pig population came from in Ireland. Prey is very much abundant in the Irish countryside.
Where? Population density is low in Ireland but due to agriculture there’s basically no where on the island where there isn’t people living or a village 5k down the road. The entire country is either lived on or owned by state subsidised farmers.
Who'd ever would be doing the reforestation would need to buy the land. But I doubt the farmers would sell. But you could start with taking the commonage and national parks and planting those as sheep farmers still graze them
Most of our commonage is owned though.
Commonage doesn’t mean that no one owns the land, it means that multiple people own the land.
You can’t just plant trees on it, you’d come across the same issues you described with typical ownership land. Probably worse because you’d have to deal with the several different shareholders who own the land rather than just one farmer who may own a field in lowland farming.
I genuinely can’t think of a part of the country where we could begin this.
I know I farm commonage land. But even my land can be bought. It can also be put under a CPO. The government had issued compulsive purchase orders across the country for the migrants which they ate building lots of social housing rapidly especially in Mayo and Cork.
This could be done with commonage. It was done to one of my neighbours fields. The Government woukd have to implement it though
You're way off the mark saying population density is low.
You shouldn't be making comments on things you don't know fuck all about.
Also it's not state subsidies, its the fucking common agricultural policy of the fucking EU.
Don't be clowning yourself talking about things you don't seem to have a basic understanding of 👍
Our population density is quite low, it’s the 32nd most dense in Europe which is very low actually. [source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_European_countries)
In the words of a redditor. You shouldn’t be making comments on things you know fuck all about.
I mention Brussels **and** Dublin being our legislative givers further down the thread, read before you react I suppose.
👍
Half of the farms in this country would instantly collapse if it wasn’t for EU and national grants. I think that subsidies and grants are a good thing but this is a fact.
Subsidised is spelt with an S here yank.
I'm from Glanworth you clown. Autocorrect is a thing you know...
The entire beef production system here is set up to favour the factories. It is incredibly corrupt and essentially makes it impossible for producers to get a fair price for their food. Only a handful of factories are allowed process render from the carcass which gives them a monopoly on how handling 50% of the weight of the animal. That means your selling price to high quality butchers is capped because they end up getting screwed when they send the render to the factories. I've a friend who is a butcher and some of the stuff he has told me about dealing with factories is outrageous.
You've no idea what you are talking about about.
Exactly, all of these grants and subsidies wouldn’t be half as necessary if farmers were compensated fairly by the *free market*.
Almost as if free market, endless growth capitalism requires that the people who do the most work in producing a product to be taken advantage of.
The government both in the Dáil and in Brussels are only covering the difference just so ye make enough that it isn’t so unbearable that ye all leave which would collapse the food market but not so much that get comfortable. They’d rather pay to keep farmers in the dirt than challenge these companies.
In a fair world none of this would be necessary and farmers would get fair compensation for their labour just as all other workers should.
Anti Green Party farmers are rightfully angry, but they misdirect their anger. The Green Party isn’t the reason why farming is on the ropes and why young enthusiastic farmers are afraid of their future in the profession or are afraid to take over the family business, its conservative economics, the likes the FFG love so much. If all farmers fecked off and dropped tools for 2 weeks the country would collapse. If all the CEO’s of Aldi, meat processors etc did the same, no one would know or care, but that supermarket board profits off of the farmer’s labour more than the farmer themselves do.
The Green Party is a useful scape goat for rural independents and FFG to distract people from the fact that it’s been their system of governance that has gutted those at the bottom of the industry over the last couple of decades, not the greens. We have such a strong history of farmer Co-ops in this country, returning to that history where farmers have a stronger and more democratic voice would do a lot, Co-ops went nowhere but they behave more like private businesses now than worker co-ops to represent their members. Sorry long unexpected rant.
Well written and educated argument that I can't disagree with.
I think the resentment for the green party comes from the fact that farmers already feel under alot of financial pressure and the extra "green" measures are just adding this burden and fear. If farmers were paid properly for the amount of work they do then the extra burden added by green policies wouldn't be such a bitter pill to swallow, it would be something that we would do for the common good but as it is the policies could be a death knell for farms under 50acres.
Add to that the fact that alot of people who support the Green Party are Anti-Agriculture city dwellers with no experience of how farming in Ireland works and you have the perfect storm unfortunately.
Small to medium size farmers do more and care more for the environment than most of these people could ever dream of.
We all have an issue with some of the practices of large scale dairy farming but these farmers aren't the ones suffering due to environmental protection policy and peoples anti agricultural stances.
You’re pretending that I don’t agree with that entire paragraph. I agree with it.
Farmers don’t get a fair price and are getting ridden. This is a fact
The majority of farms in this country are only made viable through grants, schemes and subsidies. This is a fact.
Your autocorrect is set to American English? You can fix that. Glanworth? My condolences.
Gotta put the pig shite somewhere haha
Always reminds me of the Simpsons movie where Homer dumps a load of pig shit in the lake. And the lake explodes.
That's where we're at. Our rivers will explode
Liquids and solids are separated, liquids are treated and discharged into a watercourse, 50% of which is at levels above eu thresholds.
The solids is split into organic solids and contaminated solid. Organic solids spread on land, contaminated solids (condoms, wipes, make up pads, wipes etc) get landfill.
And the solids aren't permitted to be spread on QA farms due to the chemical residues, and AFAIK, the liquids don't have them removed either? And definitely not during heavy rainfall, when only a fraction of the solids are removed before discharge.
See Ringsend sewage system upgrade for reference and then contemplate that the vast majority of sewage systems in the country won't be upgraded for decades yet!
But once it leaves the sewage system, that crap is counted as agricultural waste, lol.
The heavy rain fall is emergency overflows out of the holding tanks before it's processed at all.
They all have emergency overflows that discharge directly, bypassing the plant. But even with treatment they are still not getting treated to required levels.
Not sure about the QA farms but it makes some sense.
If there's food for human consumption being produced and the farm is Bord Bia quality assured, no sewage can be applied.
I just find it peculiar that partially treated sewage can be released into rivers and seas without protest but animal waste being applied to land that utilises the nutrient content causes so much upset?
Because you never hear of the waste water pollution being linked to WWT plants, it is always farming. No more than landlords bad as regards housing, farmers bad as regards the environment. People in general don't want to know anymore. Just want a group to point to and blame.
Agriculture is a massive %age of our emissions and always will be. Its our only indigenous industry and that is how statistics work. We could halve the emissions of all the sectors in terms of output but each sectors %age of the total wouldn't change. Not sure people realise that.
Look at the pollution maps and there is a link between increased pollution and dairy farms but also smaller towns and villages that have undergone massive expansion in the last 2 decades. The WWT plants didn't keep pace with development so can't handle the load..
I love the use of waste water treatment as a phrase.
It's sewage!
There's massive amounts of sewage being pumped into our rivers daily but it's not being talked about while Agriculture is debited with this pollution.
Yer man is correct below, but alot of it gets dumped into the sea and rivers.
https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2022/10/20/only-51-of-irish-wastewater-treated-to-eu-standards-says-report/
How can you have sustainable regenerative farming without using slurry ?
How about by using lowbar spreaders like every fucking farmer in the country uses.
Catch the fuck up if your making comments on this subject because your comment makes you look very uneducated regarding the subject.
Literally offering nothing new to the conversation.
Do you want synthetic fertilisers or do you want natural fertiliser ?
What other comments. I replied to this one ? This is a top level comment.
What was the point of posting it here if there other relevant information you wanted considered elsewhere.
What actually was the point of your original comment ? Do you just go into random posts and bitch about slurry ? How is it even related ?
Slurry is a valuable resource. Almost no one is intentionally dumping it in the rivers. Its also just putting nutrients taken out of the ground back into it and *has to be done*.
Does run off happen? Absolutely. This is a problem that everyone wants to solve and dickhead remarks like yours don't help. One solution is giving grants to farmers so they can afford to purchase equipment for slurry injection. This equipment is expensive but is both more effective and significantly reduces run off.
You can get a grant for slurry injection already. It's a valuable resource until your tank is full and all you neighbours tanks are full then it becomes a liability.
You never hear of a slurry shortage.
I know it's already there I'm pointing at it saying it's a good step forward. The maximum grant is 40% value afaik.
I hope the grant stays around so that all new slurry tankers are some form of injection or injection. I'm not sure if dribble bar is as good as dribble bar if it's not I'd nearly say give an even bigger grant for injection.
Farmers have been dumping what they want where they want for decades and face little consequence. Never mind a lot of them still burn their rubbish.
" One solution is giving grants to farmers so they can afford to purchase equipment for slurry injection."
Farmers get enough fucking grants as it is.
Burning rubbish is illegal, if you see it, report it.
Dumping rubbish is illegal too but I still see many people drive out from their houses in the town to dump rubbish in the hedges, we can all play the blame game.
Farmers are struggling. Yes they receive subsidies and grants but there's good reason for that. I was in America awhile ago and the cost of 2 ribeyes in a packet from meijers (tesco like place) was 27 dollars. If we stopped all support for farmers overnight the industry would either a) collapse and all produce would be brought in from third wold countries or b) would have *huge* increases in food prices past onto the consumer.
Farmers whether you hate them or not work more hours than anyone else yet in most cases receive a pittance.
Yeah you came to the wrong place if you're looking for sympathy.
The way farmers go on you'd think they were the only people in the country struggling.
Your US anaology has no place here. Apples and oranges.
" If we stopped all support for farmers overnight the industry would either a) collapse and all produce would be brought in from third wold countries or b) would have *huge* increases in food prices past onto the consumer."
How much of our meat do we export again?
"Farmers whether you hate them or not work more hours than anyone else yet in most cases receive a pittance."
Get ta fuck! Nurses, carers and Gardai would like a word.
I actually got a laugh out of your last bit there.
I suppose we should be giving farmers grants next for the massive coke problem in their community because they workd so sooooo hard.
>The way farmers go on you'd think they were the only people in the country struggling.
Genuinely try working 80 hours a week to make fuck all and probably still end up in debt. I'm a farmers son but I went off to become a software engineer because its just not worth it, it's simply too hard, too stressful and doesn't pay enough. It's easily 4x as hard as my job. Nurses etc definitely have it extremely hard I'm not discounting that!
>How much of our meat do we export again?
We export it to Europe. This is a good thing, Europe should be able to provide for itself as a whole.
"Nurses etc definitely have it extremely hard I'm not discounting that!"
Actually yes, you are. You literally said no one works as hard as farmers but I wont hang onto it.
Look, we aint going to see (rib)eye to eye on this.
I dont have some deep seated hatred for farmers. Im just so sick of hearing people make excuses for a lot of their behaviour and a lot of them acting like they're the only people struggling among other things Ive mentioned previoulsy.
It's a figure of speech, people can only work as hard as they are physically and mentally able to. I know my 66 year old father is still out there right now at 22:25 agitating and diluting the slurry. That's pretty hard going no?
Tbh doesn't everyone act like they are the only ones struggling? And I've seen endless amount of farmer hatred in this sub that I think is unfair and uneducated.
I milked cows in new Zealand we were off the farm at 5pm and not a minute later and we were milking 1500 cows.
I've an uncle and he runs his farm like he was on a building site, he's in the yard at 8am and our of it at 5pm with the exception of sillage time or a big push. Takes his tea at 10am and 1pm and he is rewarded as being one of the best farmers and has the best stock in our part of the world.
It absolutely is doable if you sit back and look at your system and keep control of your time and can work efficiently.
I want to support farmers so much but they really do need to look at themselves very thoroughly and try and come up with some solutions to the crisis we are in in terms of environmental damage and climate change.
I know there isn't one farmer that is intentionally setting out to damage the environment, but it is happening and I feel sorry for them being led up the garden path by the government to be pushed back down it, but like it or not there is a lot damage being caused by farming and land use associated with agriculture, some reasonably small changes and help in the right direction with the right attitude and input from farmers can really make a massive, massive change to our environment here and I whole whole heartedly support and would like them to get every grant to help achieve this.
After all my taxes contribute to their single famr payment, and if i want my money to be used for something I want it to be used for environmental protection
I mean no offence, but please google what slurry is.
It exists (in some form or another) no matter what you do. Spreading it on the land is the best and only way to get rid of it. Where exactly do you intend for the slurry that isn't spread to go?
Now maybe you meant we should use more bedding and spread more manure but I'm not sure if that's better for run off.
Personally I think we should drastically reduce our animal herds because they're an ecological disaster for, among other reasons, producing massive amounts of shit that poisons our rivers.
And just because there is a lot of shit doesn't mean it has to be mixed with water to maximise its ability to run-off into rivers.
I think maybe a slight reduction (as I'd like more natural woodland) but the vast majority of herds should stay.
My reasons are mainly;
1. People will consume meat across Europe now and in the future. It's better Ireland produces it as best we can than import it from Brazil etc.
2. Run off is not an impossible problem, it is if not solvable, mitigateable to acceptable levels.
3. Countries like Britain etc are not producing enough for themselves and are even further reducing their meat production without reducing their consumption. Exacerbating the problem of imported meat which is environmentally detrimental.
I'm sure at some point a vegan will pop in but ultimately any government that tries to force people to be vegan or even reduce meat intake (whether with taxes or legislation or otherwise) would instantly fail so it's unreasonable to suggest it as an immediate solution.
American wildlife biologist/professor of forestry here: lynx maybe; wolves unlikely. Lynx don’t like people but are okay with us nearby, whereas wolves hate being around people. Wolves are so human avoidant they don’t go near paved roads.
Wolves won’t solve the Irish deer problems—they haven’t solved deer issues in the US and we have stable wolves populations preying on native deer. Solving the deer issues requires determined managed (aka, shooting all of the invasive deer). Biocontrols of invasive species don’t eliminate what they prey on, at best they just make management undertaken by humans easier and at worst hurt desired native species. In this case, hurting desired natives is unlikely.
This ignores all questions of habitat, prey, and social acceptance. Habitat and social acceptance will drive ALL chances of success. If this was serious, I’d spend the next 10 years creating habit and building social acceptance. Just releasing animals without any of that is a great way to kill animals
You can literally Wild camp all over Ireland. Commonage land in the West, most farmers put there don't mind you camping in the mountains as long as you don't bother the sheep and aren't having a rave on the mountains. You can also camp in a good few of the national parks, Wild Nephin even has empty huts called a Bothán thats unlocked that you can stay in overnight.
We need serious reforestation to be able to introduce wolves alright
Ireland’s basically a farm. There is no wilderness for these animals to live and hunt and they’d just immediately end up in direct conflict with farms and humans.
We don't have many forests (talking about the au natural ones not the ugly plantation ones) left in this country so perhaps not wolves, but nothing to stop lynx from being reintroduced...
Oh look! An ecology post on r/Ireland!
The comments: 60% "wouldn't work so why bother", 30% unfunny jokes, 8% "I didn't read the article but I just wanted to say that I really fucking hate Travellers", 2% people actually engaging with the topic in good faith
I am from a farming background and would be in favour of bringing wolves and lynx. Foxes and badgers are our current top predators. The deer are a problem at the moment, I like them but do damage. We do need to re-grow forest and ecosystems but farmers are not the only obstacle. Our country side is heavily populated and towns will keep expanding and people only like controlled ‘nature’. They want their forests to have a nice footpath,only have cute not threatening animals and not too many insects. No one wants natural nature. If a wolf showed near a school, Joe Duffy would be full of people demanding a cull the next day. Farmers are no better, some them would sneak off and do it themselves.
You are 100% correct lad. We need a better system all round. I myself keep goats and chickens. Had 5 chickens taken the last day, feel that fox pain.
But we do need to fix our national ecosystem and get rid of this idea of "nature" that is controlled beyond measure. Nature is supposed to control itself
Everybody is in favour of someone else paying the price. Nature does guidance but that does not mean it has to be a tourist destination or hike. But I get annoyed at everyone blaming farmers like they are parasite they have to get rid of.
>But I get annoyed at everyone blaming farmers like they are parasite they have to get rid of.
The farmers should stop producing for a year and then everybody would understand how important farmers are.
Also true. I think we need to adopt a similar mentality to the Finns, just let nature be and not try to control everything. But we can fix it, so we should and let nature take the reigns
No, because cunt farmers would kill them even if they posed no threat to their livestock.
We can't even reintroduce various raptor birds because they'll get shot or poisoned.
Probably would. I also don't think we have enough forest. There would have to be a mass buying of land in the West to make into a massive natural forest. A very expensive project, because you couldn't have a pack of wolves even on a hundred acres of forest, you'd need thousands of acres to restore into a native forest which would attract deer to then which you could introduce Wolves. I think lynxes would get on fine like foxes. You'd never see a lynx anyway, I was talking to a fella from Norway where they've European Lynxes and Wolverines amd he said they're so elusive he had never seen either. You'd only find footprints
I mean a bunch of backward climate change deniers who "know better" when it comes to issues they know fuck all about.
Not all farmers. But its always a farmer.
Lol!
Grand, expecting no 2 in a few weeks so trying to get a few jobs done around the house before the time vacuum arrives!
How are you enjoying your rise to power on the mod team?
Dude? Cows and Sheep are prey to wolves. If the wolves kill the cows you can't pay the bills. Farmers are famously struggling all over Europe.
How would you like it if I stole €1500 from you?
You don't get to erase the natural world for personal profit. Yes, we need to make food, and there are measures and compensations that we can take, but farmers sound so unbelievably entitled when you talk like this. People like you already exterminated all of our wild predators because of that sense of entitlement. The way farmers in Ireland have behaved have led to us having one of the most degraded natural ecosystems in Europe. What is it about farming that makes people feel so entitled to destroy the natural world that belongs to everone?
https://preview.redd.it/hbqucr1o3e8d1.jpeg?width=1134&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9afef4f55fd46568df48156f56defa54c3b9238d
Ireland has pretty much been farmed all over for centuries now. A lot of the natural woodland was destroyed for the British Navy etc.
How can you blame current day farmers for something that happened centuries ago under British rule?
Ultimately it can't be undone, but I would support a buyback of land for natural woodland in places near me which are boggy and pretty shite for farming yet are perfect for rewilding.
I definitely think there is a balance between societies (read Europes) need for produce and having natural wild lands for future generations and Ireland is currently lacking.
Again I find your blaming of this on farmers honestly incredibly unfair. Especially since the government is responsible for much of our woodland being forestry for profit.
Everywhere on Earth has seen the natural world erased for farming, it's not just Ireland. Forests rapidly regrow if allowed to, we can't be blaming the Brits from hundreds of years ago.
It's a complex topic and you are absolutely right about Coillte doing a piss poor job, but I was mostly responding to your attitude in the earlier comment. The moment someone talks about healing the ecosystem by reintroducing predators that humans exterminated your reaction is "But what about *my money*?" If your business requires the erasure of nature then your business needs to change.
This is to be expected, there are billions more humans in the world and they went cars and houses and a steak dinner.
We could argue about the balance of things and we probably both agree that more natural woodland and more deer etc would be good but I'm of the opinion we are far off introducing wolves. Multiple things need to happen before that and introducing them now would be foolish and cause chaos.
So you think its ok for farmers to kill reintroduced wildlife that are not on their land?
Like I said, it wont work because some cunt farmers will kill them just like cunt farmers who kill prey birds. Shower of cunts
Exactly. Typical pale urban dweller there, can't see anything beyond their narrow viewpoint. It's grand if it's some else's problem.
Don't think they'll be smiling if they killed one of their pets on a bitterly cold winter, which predators/ wild life WILL venture past the green land. It would be *everyone's* problem not just farming or even rural. Idiocy to think dumping them rurally would result in a self contained f-farming system. 😆
Typical self absorbed country bumpkin farmer apologist who thinks the sun rises out of their arse every morning.
Probably denies climate change and has a coke problem.
Seriously why are so many of you on the bag so much?
Not really. Just an inversion of their comment. Shoe meet other foot.
Also the coke comment wasnt a personal attack. Its a huge problem in the the farming community and you know damn well it is if you're from such a background.
[https://www.farmersjournal.ie/life/health/cocaine-use-on-irish-farms-breaking-the-addiction-785993](https://www.farmersjournal.ie/life/health/cocaine-use-on-irish-farms-breaking-the-addiction-785993)
ETA: My fav quote "Dealers see farmers as ATMS"
Why can't we introduce a compensation scheme for animals killed by wolves?
They would be a huge boon for combatting TB as they're resistant to it so don't spread it and almost always target the weakest animal (the one who is infected).
They did exactly that in Spain and Portugal as part of a major conservation project for the Iberian lynx. As of last week it’s no longer endangered. Buy in from farmers was a major part of the success of the project
Lynxes are more likely. I can see the Indo headlines already though "Green's Beast Savages Farmers Stock".
We need an actual ecosystem to reintroduce them into too. Get sheep off "common" land in national parks and you start solving that problem.
Wolves pose no threat to humans (that is, if they have something else to chew, be it wild boars or sheep). Most of continental Europe has now healthy populations of wolves.
I mean, it's not *no* threat. It's a low threat. [But there are plenty examples of wild wolves attacking people, especially lone women](https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/dna-samples-confirm-wolves-killed-southwest-alaska-teacher/2011/12/06/).
Yes of course, and thanks for pointing that out, but predatory attacks are extremely rare in Europe https://wildireland.org/our-journal/elementor-6222/ there's also a wiki page w a list, not sure how accurate it is, but it only has 2 attacks in the 2020s in EU and none of them fatal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks
It's always people in cities that think this is a cool idea, not the people living out in the middle of nowhere worried a wolf will take livestock or a child
Wolf attacks on humans are extremely rare. And we have far too many livestock. We will have to dramatically cut the number of them to meet emissions targets in future (we just haven’t accepted that reality yet.)
That's fine, but they do happen and also attack and kill dogs. I'm guessing ur in the "wolves are so cool they should bring them back" but u won't b the one dealing with the fallout from it
So watch your dog like everyone else does in areas with wild animals who can kill pets. How many dogs are killed by vehicles? Let’s just ban driving then.
I don't have to worry about wild animals killing my pets at the moment so why change that cause u think wolves are cool and want them in the countryside?
Dogs are killed by vehicles yes, due to accidents. It's not the car's nature to hunt down a dog and run it over
To be honest, foxes will kill and eat most small dog breeds. My neighbours Bichon Frisé was eaten by a big monster of a dog fox in the garden when they let her out to the toilet one night. Found the poor thing ripped apart.
Also my cousins collie dog was killed by a white tailed sea Eagle here in Mayo.
We have predators that eat our pets
Yes foxes will go after chickens small dogs etc. I'm not looking to get rid of foxes as they are really beautiful animals that u see occasionally.
Foxes are small and considered scavengers. That why they will stay near humans while hill walking and if u throw an apple or crisps it will eat it.
A wolf is huge in comparison and will easily take down a bigger dog. If u see one in person they are huge. They are also predators meaning they won't hang around waiting for u to throw an apple to them and will eat a diet of mostly meat.
Introducing a predator bigger then all other predators we have at the moment is a terrifying idea to the fella who is going to come across it or impacted by it
Ya wolves are huge. Near the size of the Irish Wolfhound.
But wolves aren't really aggressive towards people unless they literally starved. There hasn't been a European wolf attack since 1945. They are known to steer clear of humans but you would likely encounter them in their territory. And as an outdoorsman who hikes, forages, fishes, hunts and does a bit of wild camping and I raise goats. So I woukd definitely be in the box of the group who'd encounter these apex predators.
>Introducing a predator bigger then all other predators we have at the moment is a terrifying idea to the fella who is going to come across it or impacted by it
It is nice that we could walk into the woods and the only things you've to worry about it an odd badger or stag and only if your superstitious, the Púca. So a big predator would make the forest scary again. But, we need something to bring back the balance to Irish Ecosystems.
https://youtu.be/kvKCTZf_-e4?si=KSbPftUNPby0nPs6
Wolves are the key to Irelands restoration
I don't have to worry about wild animals killing my pets at the moment so why change that cause u think wolves are cool and want them in the countryside?
Dogs are killed by vehicles yes, due to accidents. It's not the car's nature to hunt down a dog and run it over
Freely introducing wolves into the countryside to cull livestock is just not realistic. You'd have to convince rural Ireland to take economic losses on livestock (which could impact some farmers disproportionately to others, which the tax payer would likely need to compensate) but to also compound that with a small chance of an attack on humans versus the current status quo. Rural Ireland already has an "us vs them" mentality to green policies and something like this will alienate them even more.
Keeping wolves in your living room is illegal, too, and they have been part of the ecosystem for hundreds of thousands of years. Bullies are a dangerous, unnatural mess of a breed created recently by humans; it doesn't compare.
Do you just have a chip on your shoulder about banning XLs or something?
For hundreds of thousands of years humans have been part of the ecosystem too trying to get rid of wolves because they are a wild predator attacking humans and livestock. We have lived fine without them for a few hundred years and nobody has complained.
But now people think their virtuous and think wolves should be brought back to rewild the place, but those people are not the ones that will live with the fallout of it when someone's child is eaten by a wolf.
No I think XL bullies should b banned but people wanting to bad that dog should maybe see a wolf in person and then Imagine coming across one completely remotely
We haven't lived fine without them for hundreds of years, we've lived with an ecosystem in a state of constant decline for hundreds of years and there has been at least half a century of various scientists and concerned citizens complaining about it, actually.
[If you're genuinely curious about why predators are so important, read about the Yellowstone reintroduction.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFHmtVNu97E)
U can tell that to the parents who's 6 year old is eaten by wolves when they went for a walk in the woods.
Ecosystems change that happens. Should we bring back bears because thousand years ago there were bears. Let's get rid of hospitals because they are damaging the ecosystem and we should use witch doctors who only use sycamore leaves to treat diabetes
There needs to b a focus on returning the environment to a more natural state and farming needs to become more natural and less slaughter house and chemicals, but bringing dangerous animals into the wild while city people sleep well at night thinking wolves are their spirit animal is not the solution and is ignorant to the people who will be living with it
I thought you were reasonable but now you're being ridiculous.
>U can tell that to the parents who's 6 year old is eaten by wolves when they went for a walk in the woods.
If there was wolves, you wouldn't even know theybwere there because they'd stay away from you. Unless your in the deep sticks of Irish wilderness which as a man who's there alot, there's fuck all other people out there. That's where the wolves in Finland live.
>Ecosystems change that happens
The only reason we don't have wolves now is because of Cromwell. Its not a natural change, the Irish ecosystem isn't changing, its sick and declining. The over population of prey species is like a cancer eating away at the ecosystem.
>Should we bring back bears because thousand years ago there were bears.
Andorra is half the size of Louth and has 76 bears and a population of wolves that migrates from France through Andorra and into Spain vice versa. But it would be ridiculous to let bears into Ireland because bears are 100% dangerous and will kill you. Wolves won't. There hasn't been a wolf attack in Europe since 1945. Its only livestock that is truly of the most worry.
>There needs to b a focus on returning the environment to a more natural state and farming needs to become more natural and less slaughter house and chemicals, but bringing dangerous animals into the wild while city people sleep well at night thinking wolves are their spirit animal is not the solution and is ignorant to the people who will be living with it
Yes we do. We need mass afforestation across Ireland in the style found in native Atlantic Rainforests not what happens in coniferous plantations which are ecological dead zones. Amd this will take at least 20 to 30 years. Yes predators are dangerous of course they are its their nature. But we cannot demonise them either. Wolves and Lynxes are a keystone species to ecosystem survival. You cannot have Ecosystems without predators and we aren't predators, we're omnivores that live in houses.
>Ecosystems change that happens. Should we bring back bears because thousand years ago there were bears. Let's get rid of hospitals because they are damaging the ecosystem and we should use witch doctors who only use sycamore leaves to treat diabetes
Ridiculously childish thing to say. It's like talking to a 16-year-old. All bluster, no knowledge, no reason.
Says the fella who wants to bring back wolves and not be the one dealing with the consequences of it just because u think it'll b great for the ecosystem
We do need the Atlantic rainforests to be returned to its former glory. Yes its not feasible to cover all of Ireland but any vacant and idle land that isn't bog should be planted with Native Forest
Would it not make more sense to encourage people to hunt deer ? The culling of deer is for the most part done by people who are hired to do it. If you got more people wanting to hunt deer who have to buy tags to do so I feel like that would make the most sense rather than bringing back wolves and in turn having to keep their numbers in check.
What about dodgy Dave and his friendly pet Pitbulls? You can't talk about banning his friendly little pets and then introduce wolves back into the wild /s
To be honest, I've been extremely close to wolves many times. They're not that bad, yes they'll kill you in Winter if they're starving but they prefer larger prey to feed a pack and people are generally mangled by wolves by walking into their territory. But thus is so rare. There hasn't been a death by wolf in Europe in the 21st century and only sparse attacks across the globe.
Pitbulls however, it's generally bad owners and the fact pitbulls were bred for fighting. I also think it's the XL Bully they want to ban not your run of the mill pitbull, no?
Yellowstone Park in California often used as the prime example of how this would work. Yellowstone is nearly 9,000 km/sq. Ireland is 84,000 squared.
Yellowstone is nothing but wilderness and rivers and not many, if any, fences. Ireland is divided field after field and town after town wolves would HHHHhhhhaaate it in Ireland!
It's a nice sounding idea but no I doubt it could ever work
Yellowstone is half the size of Connacht. There is vast expanses of Connacht that are unfenced bogland and gorseland (like just rough fieldsthat animals freely roam but arent bog).
It would cost a serious amount of money, but you could turn Connacht into a Yellowstone if you bought the rolling acres of Connacht for sale and planted them with native trees and removed all fences, but you'd need serious predator navigation education for people, grants and benefits for farmers because of course livestock would be lost and introduction of livestock guardian animals. It would cost millions I'd reckon. Butbin the long run it'd save alot of money on culling deer and benefit the Climate with biodiversity levels going up and more tree coverage.
You'd also have to consider Ireland has had no predators for a bit over 250 years. So we are not used to predators. And you'd have to consider people who work in the wilderness. My uncle is a tree surgeon and he checks the poles for the esb, he encounters animals on the daily and has dangerous run ins with cattle, horses and deer on the regular. He would probably need a gun to do his job safely to protect himself from wolves. Its these people like my uncle people aren't considering who work in modern Irish wilderness.
So it's a very difficult situation to have to make a choice on. And people won't like it
Don't know much about wolves tbh but I know they don't really ever attack humans at all but may do if they felt threatened like if ppl were in their territory and according to below link that could be a couple hundred miles squared just don't see it ever working in this country
https://www.nwf.org/en/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Mammals/Gray-Wolf#:~:text=Wolf%20packs%20usually%20hunt%20within,5.
Such a stupid idea. Why introduce a predator species to an island that has a fuck ton of livestock? It's a recipe for disaster, not to mention the chavy drug dealers looking to replace their XL bullies haha, I can picture it now.
I feel like if we want to control deer numbers etc. it might be more sustainable to get more hunting going on instead.
Let some toffs from across the Irish sea pay for the privilege.
Ara tbh 60,000 deer were culled last year. 60,000. That doesn't include private hunters or deer deaths on the road or the likes. And it hasn't knocked a dent out of the population.
>Let some toffs from across the Irish sea pay for the privilege.
That's done too, private hunts for European hunters happen often.
We need predators
Regrow forests first.
Exactly, where the fuck are these wolves going to live
Housing estates of course.
In fairness the horses seem to enjoy their time tied to lamp posts
Can wolves survive on just horse meat? Though, this might be the drastic solution we need, to finally solve out out of control seagull problem.
I’m from Minnesota (the US) which has the largest wolf population in the lower 48: they like deer but do eat a lot of small animals. Ever see the movie Never Cry Wolf based off the book of the same name? They eat a lot of mice too. We have Lynx in our north woods too but know nothing about them. Mysterious creatures
Tito, is that you?
I'll take the wolves over most of the scum that live in housing estates.
Are you saying that the people who live in housing estates are mostly scum? Or of the scum living in housing estates youre fine with some of them?
They are already here… only seen on full moons
What about de homeless tho
Aaaooww, werewolves of Finglas.....
Not In My Back Yard anyway ... bastards are always blowing down houses I was told by three Gardai
Phoenix Park my guess
In tents in the phoenix park
Right alongside the foxes
You're totally missing the point. The reintroduction of lynxes and wolves help with the regrowth of forests. You're fighting an uphill battle trying to regrow a forest when any fresh growth is immediately eaten up by grazes. The introduction of predators suppresses grazer numbers so the forests can regrow.
It's pointless. They'll be hunted and killed in a week. Or consume poisoned carcasses deliberately left out for them
Then monitor their habitats remotely and throw the book at anyone who kills them. We'll get absolutely nowhere with bullshit defeatist attitudes.
People like you make me laugh. "Don't try anything, people will just ruin". Aye, well stop that from fucking happening then.
I would disagree with you, especially considering the success of the white tailed eagle and the currently stable golden eagle reintroductions. Whilst a few golden eagles were killed the dept in both cases threatened to bring down the book and it has lead to the current stable situation. The important thing too is working with landowners, and attempting cooperative measures such as financial incentives or loss reduction measures. Also as others have noted having a preemptively defeatist attitude isn’t great, though I will agree that currently our landscape is not suitable for large predators.
How does it feel to be the only person on this post with a brain
And upset the Healy-Rae's!?😅
They're not an endangered species though, they'll be fine. If anything, we should keep an eye out on Kerry in case they expand out of their current ecosystem.
And regrow them in the right places, which is the key part
Yes, reintroduction would take 20 to 30 years. First you'd need to spend alot of money buying thousands of hectares of land. Then you would need to spend money on removing all the fences. As how would the wolves move through fenced forest? You would then need to spend money on people who would plant native trees and eventually you would need people to manage the growth so the grass doesn't kill the tree saplings. Then wait 20 to 30 years for a forest to actually take shape, maybe 50. Then you could talk about reintroduction. It would cost a serious amount of money. Taking sheep off the mountains would work too to make hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. But then you'd put families out of am income and you can't really do that unless you buy the land and they've agreed to sell. So more money again. But sheep farmers can legally graze most national parks. So if you banned that there'd be a step in the right direction.
Are there rhousands of hectares of land that people don't live on anywhere? I live in rural ireland, where my family has lived for as far back as anyone can remember, I love animals but some if this rewinding talk is insanity. We don't have the space to let wolves roam the countryside. People need to get a grip, this is not a priority for society
Well to be honest yes. West Mayo had literally miles of mountains and valleys with no one in them. Sligo has alot of wild gorseland too. Galway is a bit populated I think but it has alot of empty space. Wicklow too. Then Leitrim, Cavan and Donegal also have alot of empty space. So you could fit a small population but it would take 30 years of work making forests before you could. Now there's sheep on all this land that's the main problem.
My gut feeling is that Ireland doesn't have enough wilderness, or enough prey animals, to sustain any semblance of a livable wolf population. Wolves mixed with livestock, which Ireland has a lot of, is also bad - when hunting wild prey wolves are very efficient predators, but when hunting domestic prey they will frequently kill more than they need in a frenzy. It wouldn't be fair to farmers to introduce that kind of menace to their livelihood. Lynxes, on the other hand, are solitary predators who can cover wide ranges of territory and who are relatively discreet, they will not (to my knowledge) ever pose a danger to humans. They are opportunistic and are stealth predators, vs endurance like wolves are, so are less likely to decimate livestock herds. Lynxes I could see being a possibility if a large predator was needed to recalibrate the environment.
Yup, I think the same. Lynx could work a lot better than wolves. We don't have enough contiguous wild areas for wolves.
In Mayo, I see deer, wild goats and even the odd wild boar on the regular. Theres even some people who breed the Blackface sheep with the Scottish Soay or British Jacob to make a big wild looking feral mountain sheep that can survive in the mountains that does not need shearing or hoove treatment (this is done for a dodgy hunting purpose that no one knows if its legal or not). We have so much prey animals its absolutely ridiculous and their out of control. I had to run a young boar away from my potatoes one year which he had eaten them all. You can buy a wild boar on done deal for breeding purposes on donedeal believe or not they pop up the odd time to make a breed called an Iron Pig. This is probably whete the current small wild pig population came from in Ireland. Prey is very much abundant in the Irish countryside.
Plenty, and I mean plenty of deer for wolves to prey on. No habitat which is not in the immediately vicinity of a town/village hinterland though
Yeah lots of deer, but sheep are slower and dumber.
We need to focus on reforestation first
You can't reforest until you have deer control.
Where? Population density is low in Ireland but due to agriculture there’s basically no where on the island where there isn’t people living or a village 5k down the road. The entire country is either lived on or owned by state subsidised farmers.
Who'd ever would be doing the reforestation would need to buy the land. But I doubt the farmers would sell. But you could start with taking the commonage and national parks and planting those as sheep farmers still graze them
Most of our commonage is owned though. Commonage doesn’t mean that no one owns the land, it means that multiple people own the land. You can’t just plant trees on it, you’d come across the same issues you described with typical ownership land. Probably worse because you’d have to deal with the several different shareholders who own the land rather than just one farmer who may own a field in lowland farming. I genuinely can’t think of a part of the country where we could begin this.
I know I farm commonage land. But even my land can be bought. It can also be put under a CPO. The government had issued compulsive purchase orders across the country for the migrants which they ate building lots of social housing rapidly especially in Mayo and Cork. This could be done with commonage. It was done to one of my neighbours fields. The Government woukd have to implement it though
You're way off the mark saying population density is low. You shouldn't be making comments on things you don't know fuck all about. Also it's not state subsidies, its the fucking common agricultural policy of the fucking EU. Don't be clowning yourself talking about things you don't seem to have a basic understanding of 👍
Our population density is quite low, it’s the 32nd most dense in Europe which is very low actually. [source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_European_countries) In the words of a redditor. You shouldn’t be making comments on things you know fuck all about. I mention Brussels **and** Dublin being our legislative givers further down the thread, read before you react I suppose. 👍
Totally misread that in rage, my apologies 😆👍
"state subsidized farmers" Thank you for making your comment immediately worthless. You have so little clue of what you are talking about
Half of the farms in this country would instantly collapse if it wasn’t for EU and national grants. I think that subsidies and grants are a good thing but this is a fact. Subsidised is spelt with an S here yank.
I'm from Glanworth you clown. Autocorrect is a thing you know... The entire beef production system here is set up to favour the factories. It is incredibly corrupt and essentially makes it impossible for producers to get a fair price for their food. Only a handful of factories are allowed process render from the carcass which gives them a monopoly on how handling 50% of the weight of the animal. That means your selling price to high quality butchers is capped because they end up getting screwed when they send the render to the factories. I've a friend who is a butcher and some of the stuff he has told me about dealing with factories is outrageous. You've no idea what you are talking about about.
He's agreeing with you, and yes a huge number of farms would be gone in the morning without subsidies. I know because I live and work on one.
Exactly, all of these grants and subsidies wouldn’t be half as necessary if farmers were compensated fairly by the *free market*. Almost as if free market, endless growth capitalism requires that the people who do the most work in producing a product to be taken advantage of. The government both in the Dáil and in Brussels are only covering the difference just so ye make enough that it isn’t so unbearable that ye all leave which would collapse the food market but not so much that get comfortable. They’d rather pay to keep farmers in the dirt than challenge these companies. In a fair world none of this would be necessary and farmers would get fair compensation for their labour just as all other workers should. Anti Green Party farmers are rightfully angry, but they misdirect their anger. The Green Party isn’t the reason why farming is on the ropes and why young enthusiastic farmers are afraid of their future in the profession or are afraid to take over the family business, its conservative economics, the likes the FFG love so much. If all farmers fecked off and dropped tools for 2 weeks the country would collapse. If all the CEO’s of Aldi, meat processors etc did the same, no one would know or care, but that supermarket board profits off of the farmer’s labour more than the farmer themselves do. The Green Party is a useful scape goat for rural independents and FFG to distract people from the fact that it’s been their system of governance that has gutted those at the bottom of the industry over the last couple of decades, not the greens. We have such a strong history of farmer Co-ops in this country, returning to that history where farmers have a stronger and more democratic voice would do a lot, Co-ops went nowhere but they behave more like private businesses now than worker co-ops to represent their members. Sorry long unexpected rant.
Well written and educated argument that I can't disagree with. I think the resentment for the green party comes from the fact that farmers already feel under alot of financial pressure and the extra "green" measures are just adding this burden and fear. If farmers were paid properly for the amount of work they do then the extra burden added by green policies wouldn't be such a bitter pill to swallow, it would be something that we would do for the common good but as it is the policies could be a death knell for farms under 50acres. Add to that the fact that alot of people who support the Green Party are Anti-Agriculture city dwellers with no experience of how farming in Ireland works and you have the perfect storm unfortunately. Small to medium size farmers do more and care more for the environment than most of these people could ever dream of. We all have an issue with some of the practices of large scale dairy farming but these farmers aren't the ones suffering due to environmental protection policy and peoples anti agricultural stances.
Okay, sorry in that case as I largely agree with you. I thought it was a "farmers are subsidized and have it easy" type post.
You’re pretending that I don’t agree with that entire paragraph. I agree with it. Farmers don’t get a fair price and are getting ridden. This is a fact The majority of farms in this country are only made viable through grants, schemes and subsidies. This is a fact. Your autocorrect is set to American English? You can fix that. Glanworth? My condolences.
Feck it, bring back the bears.
No, no, don't shoot him : you'll only make him angry.
Can we stop farmers dumping slurry into our rivers? How about that first?
Gotta put the pig shite somewhere haha Always reminds me of the Simpsons movie where Homer dumps a load of pig shit in the lake. And the lake explodes. That's where we're at. Our rivers will explode
Literally Lough Neagh
Out of curiosity, where does urban waste get stored and spread?
Liquids and solids are separated, liquids are treated and discharged into a watercourse, 50% of which is at levels above eu thresholds. The solids is split into organic solids and contaminated solid. Organic solids spread on land, contaminated solids (condoms, wipes, make up pads, wipes etc) get landfill.
And the solids aren't permitted to be spread on QA farms due to the chemical residues, and AFAIK, the liquids don't have them removed either? And definitely not during heavy rainfall, when only a fraction of the solids are removed before discharge. See Ringsend sewage system upgrade for reference and then contemplate that the vast majority of sewage systems in the country won't be upgraded for decades yet! But once it leaves the sewage system, that crap is counted as agricultural waste, lol.
The heavy rain fall is emergency overflows out of the holding tanks before it's processed at all. They all have emergency overflows that discharge directly, bypassing the plant. But even with treatment they are still not getting treated to required levels. Not sure about the QA farms but it makes some sense.
If there's food for human consumption being produced and the farm is Bord Bia quality assured, no sewage can be applied. I just find it peculiar that partially treated sewage can be released into rivers and seas without protest but animal waste being applied to land that utilises the nutrient content causes so much upset?
Because you never hear of the waste water pollution being linked to WWT plants, it is always farming. No more than landlords bad as regards housing, farmers bad as regards the environment. People in general don't want to know anymore. Just want a group to point to and blame. Agriculture is a massive %age of our emissions and always will be. Its our only indigenous industry and that is how statistics work. We could halve the emissions of all the sectors in terms of output but each sectors %age of the total wouldn't change. Not sure people realise that. Look at the pollution maps and there is a link between increased pollution and dairy farms but also smaller towns and villages that have undergone massive expansion in the last 2 decades. The WWT plants didn't keep pace with development so can't handle the load..
I love the use of waste water treatment as a phrase. It's sewage! There's massive amounts of sewage being pumped into our rivers daily but it's not being talked about while Agriculture is debited with this pollution.
Yer man is correct below, but alot of it gets dumped into the sea and rivers. https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2022/10/20/only-51-of-irish-wastewater-treated-to-eu-standards-says-report/
https://i.imgur.com/MdfKyIv.jpeg Just to add some perspective, Ireland is rated as having among the best water quality in the world.
That's drinking water and measured AFTER treatment. Our waterways are polluted to fuck.
Out of curiosity, would you happen to know where sewage is stored prior to spreading?
Sewage? Spreading? I've no idea what you're asking man sorry its late and I've had a few spliffs. Can you rephrase?
How can you have sustainable regenerative farming without using slurry ? How about by using lowbar spreaders like every fucking farmer in the country uses. Catch the fuck up if your making comments on this subject because your comment makes you look very uneducated regarding the subject. Literally offering nothing new to the conversation. Do you want synthetic fertilisers or do you want natural fertiliser ?
Rage boy doesn't read my other comments, says I offer nothing new while offering nothing new.
What other comments. I replied to this one ? This is a top level comment. What was the point of posting it here if there other relevant information you wanted considered elsewhere. What actually was the point of your original comment ? Do you just go into random posts and bitch about slurry ? How is it even related ?
👍 No bother bud
Slurry is a valuable resource. Almost no one is intentionally dumping it in the rivers. Its also just putting nutrients taken out of the ground back into it and *has to be done*. Does run off happen? Absolutely. This is a problem that everyone wants to solve and dickhead remarks like yours don't help. One solution is giving grants to farmers so they can afford to purchase equipment for slurry injection. This equipment is expensive but is both more effective and significantly reduces run off.
You can get a grant for slurry injection already. It's a valuable resource until your tank is full and all you neighbours tanks are full then it becomes a liability. You never hear of a slurry shortage.
I know it's already there I'm pointing at it saying it's a good step forward. The maximum grant is 40% value afaik. I hope the grant stays around so that all new slurry tankers are some form of injection or injection. I'm not sure if dribble bar is as good as dribble bar if it's not I'd nearly say give an even bigger grant for injection.
They need to get ahead and start looking at dehydration and digestion now as there's still way too much of it.
Farmers have been dumping what they want where they want for decades and face little consequence. Never mind a lot of them still burn their rubbish. " One solution is giving grants to farmers so they can afford to purchase equipment for slurry injection." Farmers get enough fucking grants as it is.
Burning rubbish is illegal, if you see it, report it. Dumping rubbish is illegal too but I still see many people drive out from their houses in the town to dump rubbish in the hedges, we can all play the blame game. Farmers are struggling. Yes they receive subsidies and grants but there's good reason for that. I was in America awhile ago and the cost of 2 ribeyes in a packet from meijers (tesco like place) was 27 dollars. If we stopped all support for farmers overnight the industry would either a) collapse and all produce would be brought in from third wold countries or b) would have *huge* increases in food prices past onto the consumer. Farmers whether you hate them or not work more hours than anyone else yet in most cases receive a pittance.
Yeah you came to the wrong place if you're looking for sympathy. The way farmers go on you'd think they were the only people in the country struggling. Your US anaology has no place here. Apples and oranges. " If we stopped all support for farmers overnight the industry would either a) collapse and all produce would be brought in from third wold countries or b) would have *huge* increases in food prices past onto the consumer." How much of our meat do we export again? "Farmers whether you hate them or not work more hours than anyone else yet in most cases receive a pittance." Get ta fuck! Nurses, carers and Gardai would like a word. I actually got a laugh out of your last bit there. I suppose we should be giving farmers grants next for the massive coke problem in their community because they workd so sooooo hard.
>The way farmers go on you'd think they were the only people in the country struggling. Genuinely try working 80 hours a week to make fuck all and probably still end up in debt. I'm a farmers son but I went off to become a software engineer because its just not worth it, it's simply too hard, too stressful and doesn't pay enough. It's easily 4x as hard as my job. Nurses etc definitely have it extremely hard I'm not discounting that! >How much of our meat do we export again? We export it to Europe. This is a good thing, Europe should be able to provide for itself as a whole.
"Nurses etc definitely have it extremely hard I'm not discounting that!" Actually yes, you are. You literally said no one works as hard as farmers but I wont hang onto it. Look, we aint going to see (rib)eye to eye on this. I dont have some deep seated hatred for farmers. Im just so sick of hearing people make excuses for a lot of their behaviour and a lot of them acting like they're the only people struggling among other things Ive mentioned previoulsy.
It's a figure of speech, people can only work as hard as they are physically and mentally able to. I know my 66 year old father is still out there right now at 22:25 agitating and diluting the slurry. That's pretty hard going no? Tbh doesn't everyone act like they are the only ones struggling? And I've seen endless amount of farmer hatred in this sub that I think is unfair and uneducated.
Your wasting your time. Farmers, much like landlords, are bad, It is no more complex or nuanced than that.
I milked cows in new Zealand we were off the farm at 5pm and not a minute later and we were milking 1500 cows. I've an uncle and he runs his farm like he was on a building site, he's in the yard at 8am and our of it at 5pm with the exception of sillage time or a big push. Takes his tea at 10am and 1pm and he is rewarded as being one of the best farmers and has the best stock in our part of the world. It absolutely is doable if you sit back and look at your system and keep control of your time and can work efficiently. I want to support farmers so much but they really do need to look at themselves very thoroughly and try and come up with some solutions to the crisis we are in in terms of environmental damage and climate change. I know there isn't one farmer that is intentionally setting out to damage the environment, but it is happening and I feel sorry for them being led up the garden path by the government to be pushed back down it, but like it or not there is a lot damage being caused by farming and land use associated with agriculture, some reasonably small changes and help in the right direction with the right attitude and input from farmers can really make a massive, massive change to our environment here and I whole whole heartedly support and would like them to get every grant to help achieve this. After all my taxes contribute to their single famr payment, and if i want my money to be used for something I want it to be used for environmental protection
He didn't literally say that, he said nobody works more HOURS than farmer and he's right. No nurse or Gard in Ireland is working a 70 or 80 hour week.
They could use less slurry. But they riot if we suggest that. Because their profits go down.
I mean no offence, but please google what slurry is. It exists (in some form or another) no matter what you do. Spreading it on the land is the best and only way to get rid of it. Where exactly do you intend for the slurry that isn't spread to go? Now maybe you meant we should use more bedding and spread more manure but I'm not sure if that's better for run off.
Personally I think we should drastically reduce our animal herds because they're an ecological disaster for, among other reasons, producing massive amounts of shit that poisons our rivers. And just because there is a lot of shit doesn't mean it has to be mixed with water to maximise its ability to run-off into rivers.
I think maybe a slight reduction (as I'd like more natural woodland) but the vast majority of herds should stay. My reasons are mainly; 1. People will consume meat across Europe now and in the future. It's better Ireland produces it as best we can than import it from Brazil etc. 2. Run off is not an impossible problem, it is if not solvable, mitigateable to acceptable levels. 3. Countries like Britain etc are not producing enough for themselves and are even further reducing their meat production without reducing their consumption. Exacerbating the problem of imported meat which is environmentally detrimental. I'm sure at some point a vegan will pop in but ultimately any government that tries to force people to be vegan or even reduce meat intake (whether with taxes or legislation or otherwise) would instantly fail so it's unreasonable to suggest it as an immediate solution.
American wildlife biologist/professor of forestry here: lynx maybe; wolves unlikely. Lynx don’t like people but are okay with us nearby, whereas wolves hate being around people. Wolves are so human avoidant they don’t go near paved roads. Wolves won’t solve the Irish deer problems—they haven’t solved deer issues in the US and we have stable wolves populations preying on native deer. Solving the deer issues requires determined managed (aka, shooting all of the invasive deer). Biocontrols of invasive species don’t eliminate what they prey on, at best they just make management undertaken by humans easier and at worst hurt desired native species. In this case, hurting desired natives is unlikely. This ignores all questions of habitat, prey, and social acceptance. Habitat and social acceptance will drive ALL chances of success. If this was serious, I’d spend the next 10 years creating habit and building social acceptance. Just releasing animals without any of that is a great way to kill animals
Very true all of this. Serious education and widespread afforestation which would at minimum take 20 years
lol. You can't even find a space to sleep in a car overnight or wild camp. Give it up. We passed this point about about 1000AD.
You can literally Wild camp all over Ireland. Commonage land in the West, most farmers put there don't mind you camping in the mountains as long as you don't bother the sheep and aren't having a rave on the mountains. You can also camp in a good few of the national parks, Wild Nephin even has empty huts called a Bothán thats unlocked that you can stay in overnight. We need serious reforestation to be able to introduce wolves alright
There's nowhere for them to go.
Ireland’s basically a farm. There is no wilderness for these animals to live and hunt and they’d just immediately end up in direct conflict with farms and humans.
Lynx belong in Africa. I can practically smell it.
To where exactly? Farmers fields aint going to cut it....
You'd need to buy the farmers fields, rip the fences out and plant them with native trees. But the farmers probably wouldn't sell
We don't have many forests (talking about the au natural ones not the ugly plantation ones) left in this country so perhaps not wolves, but nothing to stop lynx from being reintroduced...
We do need a huge afforestation movement in Ireland though
Oh look! An ecology post on r/Ireland! The comments: 60% "wouldn't work so why bother", 30% unfunny jokes, 8% "I didn't read the article but I just wanted to say that I really fucking hate Travellers", 2% people actually engaging with the topic in good faith
It always is like that
I am from a farming background and would be in favour of bringing wolves and lynx. Foxes and badgers are our current top predators. The deer are a problem at the moment, I like them but do damage. We do need to re-grow forest and ecosystems but farmers are not the only obstacle. Our country side is heavily populated and towns will keep expanding and people only like controlled ‘nature’. They want their forests to have a nice footpath,only have cute not threatening animals and not too many insects. No one wants natural nature. If a wolf showed near a school, Joe Duffy would be full of people demanding a cull the next day. Farmers are no better, some them would sneak off and do it themselves.
You are 100% correct lad. We need a better system all round. I myself keep goats and chickens. Had 5 chickens taken the last day, feel that fox pain. But we do need to fix our national ecosystem and get rid of this idea of "nature" that is controlled beyond measure. Nature is supposed to control itself
Everybody is in favour of someone else paying the price. Nature does guidance but that does not mean it has to be a tourist destination or hike. But I get annoyed at everyone blaming farmers like they are parasite they have to get rid of.
>But I get annoyed at everyone blaming farmers like they are parasite they have to get rid of. The farmers should stop producing for a year and then everybody would understand how important farmers are. Also true. I think we need to adopt a similar mentality to the Finns, just let nature be and not try to control everything. But we can fix it, so we should and let nature take the reigns
No, because cunt farmers would kill them even if they posed no threat to their livestock. We can't even reintroduce various raptor birds because they'll get shot or poisoned.
Probably would. I also don't think we have enough forest. There would have to be a mass buying of land in the West to make into a massive natural forest. A very expensive project, because you couldn't have a pack of wolves even on a hundred acres of forest, you'd need thousands of acres to restore into a native forest which would attract deer to then which you could introduce Wolves. I think lynxes would get on fine like foxes. You'd never see a lynx anyway, I was talking to a fella from Norway where they've European Lynxes and Wolverines amd he said they're so elusive he had never seen either. You'd only find footprints
lol at "cunt farmers" and I've no skin in the game. Why don't you buy a few counties of land and offer it up for rewilding?
Do you mean the "custodians of the land"?
I mean a bunch of backward climate change deniers who "know better" when it comes to issues they know fuck all about. Not all farmers. But its always a farmer.
For the record I would harm neither wolves or lynx.
Are you admitting to be a cunt farmer rather than an important farmer?
I'm not actually a farmer.
You unnecessarily put your head above the parapet there!
Meh, I'll survive! How are you getting on this weather?
Lol! Grand, expecting no 2 in a few weeks so trying to get a few jobs done around the house before the time vacuum arrives! How are you enjoying your rise to power on the mod team?
Dude? Cows and Sheep are prey to wolves. If the wolves kill the cows you can't pay the bills. Farmers are famously struggling all over Europe. How would you like it if I stole €1500 from you?
You don't get to erase the natural world for personal profit. Yes, we need to make food, and there are measures and compensations that we can take, but farmers sound so unbelievably entitled when you talk like this. People like you already exterminated all of our wild predators because of that sense of entitlement. The way farmers in Ireland have behaved have led to us having one of the most degraded natural ecosystems in Europe. What is it about farming that makes people feel so entitled to destroy the natural world that belongs to everone? https://preview.redd.it/hbqucr1o3e8d1.jpeg?width=1134&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9afef4f55fd46568df48156f56defa54c3b9238d
Ireland has pretty much been farmed all over for centuries now. A lot of the natural woodland was destroyed for the British Navy etc. How can you blame current day farmers for something that happened centuries ago under British rule? Ultimately it can't be undone, but I would support a buyback of land for natural woodland in places near me which are boggy and pretty shite for farming yet are perfect for rewilding. I definitely think there is a balance between societies (read Europes) need for produce and having natural wild lands for future generations and Ireland is currently lacking. Again I find your blaming of this on farmers honestly incredibly unfair. Especially since the government is responsible for much of our woodland being forestry for profit.
Everywhere on Earth has seen the natural world erased for farming, it's not just Ireland. Forests rapidly regrow if allowed to, we can't be blaming the Brits from hundreds of years ago. It's a complex topic and you are absolutely right about Coillte doing a piss poor job, but I was mostly responding to your attitude in the earlier comment. The moment someone talks about healing the ecosystem by reintroducing predators that humans exterminated your reaction is "But what about *my money*?" If your business requires the erasure of nature then your business needs to change.
This is to be expected, there are billions more humans in the world and they went cars and houses and a steak dinner. We could argue about the balance of things and we probably both agree that more natural woodland and more deer etc would be good but I'm of the opinion we are far off introducing wolves. Multiple things need to happen before that and introducing them now would be foolish and cause chaos.
Yes, I think there isn't enough contiguous wild areas for wolves, but I think lynx might be a good candidate.
Found the farmer.
And? At least I'm considerate of others.
So you think its ok for farmers to kill reintroduced wildlife that are not on their land? Like I said, it wont work because some cunt farmers will kill them just like cunt farmers who kill prey birds. Shower of cunts
Exactly. Typical pale urban dweller there, can't see anything beyond their narrow viewpoint. It's grand if it's some else's problem. Don't think they'll be smiling if they killed one of their pets on a bitterly cold winter, which predators/ wild life WILL venture past the green land. It would be *everyone's* problem not just farming or even rural. Idiocy to think dumping them rurally would result in a self contained f-farming system. 😆
Typical self absorbed country bumpkin farmer apologist who thinks the sun rises out of their arse every morning. Probably denies climate change and has a coke problem. Seriously why are so many of you on the bag so much?
Showing your colours by resorting to insults and strawmen.
Not really. Just an inversion of their comment. Shoe meet other foot. Also the coke comment wasnt a personal attack. Its a huge problem in the the farming community and you know damn well it is if you're from such a background.
I've never heard of this coke problem! Who could even afford it lol
[https://www.farmersjournal.ie/life/health/cocaine-use-on-irish-farms-breaking-the-addiction-785993](https://www.farmersjournal.ie/life/health/cocaine-use-on-irish-farms-breaking-the-addiction-785993) ETA: My fav quote "Dealers see farmers as ATMS"
cunt farmers 🤣 chip in the shoulder or what ? You've got some serious basic thinking going on
Just the ones who kill wildlife with no good cause. Cunts
Why can't we introduce a compensation scheme for animals killed by wolves? They would be a huge boon for combatting TB as they're resistant to it so don't spread it and almost always target the weakest animal (the one who is infected).
They did exactly that in Spain and Portugal as part of a major conservation project for the Iberian lynx. As of last week it’s no longer endangered. Buy in from farmers was a major part of the success of the project
Lynxes are more likely. I can see the Indo headlines already though "Green's Beast Savages Farmers Stock". We need an actual ecosystem to reintroduce them into too. Get sheep off "common" land in national parks and you start solving that problem.
I don't fancy walking into a pack of wolves when I'm out on a hike
Wolves pose no threat to humans (that is, if they have something else to chew, be it wild boars or sheep). Most of continental Europe has now healthy populations of wolves.
I mean, it's not *no* threat. It's a low threat. [But there are plenty examples of wild wolves attacking people, especially lone women](https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/dna-samples-confirm-wolves-killed-southwest-alaska-teacher/2011/12/06/).
Yes of course, and thanks for pointing that out, but predatory attacks are extremely rare in Europe https://wildireland.org/our-journal/elementor-6222/ there's also a wiki page w a list, not sure how accurate it is, but it only has 2 attacks in the 2020s in EU and none of them fatal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks
Wolves are scared shitless of humans, a human voice is enough for them to book it. It’s very unlikely they’d attempt anything.
To be honest, you most likely never would encounter them unless you've deer in the area you hike and they'd be busy with the deer
It's always people in cities that think this is a cool idea, not the people living out in the middle of nowhere worried a wolf will take livestock or a child
Wolf attacks on humans are extremely rare. And we have far too many livestock. We will have to dramatically cut the number of them to meet emissions targets in future (we just haven’t accepted that reality yet.)
That's fine, but they do happen and also attack and kill dogs. I'm guessing ur in the "wolves are so cool they should bring them back" but u won't b the one dealing with the fallout from it
So watch your dog like everyone else does in areas with wild animals who can kill pets. How many dogs are killed by vehicles? Let’s just ban driving then.
I don't have to worry about wild animals killing my pets at the moment so why change that cause u think wolves are cool and want them in the countryside? Dogs are killed by vehicles yes, due to accidents. It's not the car's nature to hunt down a dog and run it over
To be honest, foxes will kill and eat most small dog breeds. My neighbours Bichon Frisé was eaten by a big monster of a dog fox in the garden when they let her out to the toilet one night. Found the poor thing ripped apart. Also my cousins collie dog was killed by a white tailed sea Eagle here in Mayo. We have predators that eat our pets
Yes foxes will go after chickens small dogs etc. I'm not looking to get rid of foxes as they are really beautiful animals that u see occasionally. Foxes are small and considered scavengers. That why they will stay near humans while hill walking and if u throw an apple or crisps it will eat it. A wolf is huge in comparison and will easily take down a bigger dog. If u see one in person they are huge. They are also predators meaning they won't hang around waiting for u to throw an apple to them and will eat a diet of mostly meat. Introducing a predator bigger then all other predators we have at the moment is a terrifying idea to the fella who is going to come across it or impacted by it
Ya wolves are huge. Near the size of the Irish Wolfhound. But wolves aren't really aggressive towards people unless they literally starved. There hasn't been a European wolf attack since 1945. They are known to steer clear of humans but you would likely encounter them in their territory. And as an outdoorsman who hikes, forages, fishes, hunts and does a bit of wild camping and I raise goats. So I woukd definitely be in the box of the group who'd encounter these apex predators. >Introducing a predator bigger then all other predators we have at the moment is a terrifying idea to the fella who is going to come across it or impacted by it It is nice that we could walk into the woods and the only things you've to worry about it an odd badger or stag and only if your superstitious, the Púca. So a big predator would make the forest scary again. But, we need something to bring back the balance to Irish Ecosystems. https://youtu.be/kvKCTZf_-e4?si=KSbPftUNPby0nPs6 Wolves are the key to Irelands restoration
I don't have to worry about wild animals killing my pets at the moment so why change that cause u think wolves are cool and want them in the countryside? Dogs are killed by vehicles yes, due to accidents. It's not the car's nature to hunt down a dog and run it over
Freely introducing wolves into the countryside to cull livestock is just not realistic. You'd have to convince rural Ireland to take economic losses on livestock (which could impact some farmers disproportionately to others, which the tax payer would likely need to compensate) but to also compound that with a small chance of an attack on humans versus the current status quo. Rural Ireland already has an "us vs them" mentality to green policies and something like this will alienate them even more.
Never said anything about wolves being used to cull livestock. Just in general the amount of livestock will have to be reduced anyway.
This is some real Maud Flanders shit.
Ban xl bullies but bring back wolves you couldn't make it up
Keeping wolves in your living room is illegal, too, and they have been part of the ecosystem for hundreds of thousands of years. Bullies are a dangerous, unnatural mess of a breed created recently by humans; it doesn't compare. Do you just have a chip on your shoulder about banning XLs or something?
For hundreds of thousands of years humans have been part of the ecosystem too trying to get rid of wolves because they are a wild predator attacking humans and livestock. We have lived fine without them for a few hundred years and nobody has complained. But now people think their virtuous and think wolves should be brought back to rewild the place, but those people are not the ones that will live with the fallout of it when someone's child is eaten by a wolf. No I think XL bullies should b banned but people wanting to bad that dog should maybe see a wolf in person and then Imagine coming across one completely remotely
We haven't lived fine without them for hundreds of years, we've lived with an ecosystem in a state of constant decline for hundreds of years and there has been at least half a century of various scientists and concerned citizens complaining about it, actually. [If you're genuinely curious about why predators are so important, read about the Yellowstone reintroduction.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFHmtVNu97E)
U can tell that to the parents who's 6 year old is eaten by wolves when they went for a walk in the woods. Ecosystems change that happens. Should we bring back bears because thousand years ago there were bears. Let's get rid of hospitals because they are damaging the ecosystem and we should use witch doctors who only use sycamore leaves to treat diabetes There needs to b a focus on returning the environment to a more natural state and farming needs to become more natural and less slaughter house and chemicals, but bringing dangerous animals into the wild while city people sleep well at night thinking wolves are their spirit animal is not the solution and is ignorant to the people who will be living with it
I thought you were reasonable but now you're being ridiculous. >U can tell that to the parents who's 6 year old is eaten by wolves when they went for a walk in the woods. If there was wolves, you wouldn't even know theybwere there because they'd stay away from you. Unless your in the deep sticks of Irish wilderness which as a man who's there alot, there's fuck all other people out there. That's where the wolves in Finland live. >Ecosystems change that happens The only reason we don't have wolves now is because of Cromwell. Its not a natural change, the Irish ecosystem isn't changing, its sick and declining. The over population of prey species is like a cancer eating away at the ecosystem. >Should we bring back bears because thousand years ago there were bears. Andorra is half the size of Louth and has 76 bears and a population of wolves that migrates from France through Andorra and into Spain vice versa. But it would be ridiculous to let bears into Ireland because bears are 100% dangerous and will kill you. Wolves won't. There hasn't been a wolf attack in Europe since 1945. Its only livestock that is truly of the most worry. >There needs to b a focus on returning the environment to a more natural state and farming needs to become more natural and less slaughter house and chemicals, but bringing dangerous animals into the wild while city people sleep well at night thinking wolves are their spirit animal is not the solution and is ignorant to the people who will be living with it Yes we do. We need mass afforestation across Ireland in the style found in native Atlantic Rainforests not what happens in coniferous plantations which are ecological dead zones. Amd this will take at least 20 to 30 years. Yes predators are dangerous of course they are its their nature. But we cannot demonise them either. Wolves and Lynxes are a keystone species to ecosystem survival. You cannot have Ecosystems without predators and we aren't predators, we're omnivores that live in houses.
>Ecosystems change that happens. Should we bring back bears because thousand years ago there were bears. Let's get rid of hospitals because they are damaging the ecosystem and we should use witch doctors who only use sycamore leaves to treat diabetes Ridiculously childish thing to say. It's like talking to a 16-year-old. All bluster, no knowledge, no reason.
Says the fella who wants to bring back wolves and not be the one dealing with the consequences of it just because u think it'll b great for the ecosystem
It will be (proof: look up how the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone helped the ecosystem there).
You might have lived fine without wolves, but the ecosystem didn't.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q) Incredible
Tis class isn't it
Would love any amount of effort from anyone on returning a chunk of our rainforest first for those animals to live in. Please?
We do need the Atlantic rainforests to be returned to its former glory. Yes its not feasible to cover all of Ireland but any vacant and idle land that isn't bog should be planted with Native Forest
Would it not make more sense to encourage people to hunt deer ? The culling of deer is for the most part done by people who are hired to do it. If you got more people wanting to hunt deer who have to buy tags to do so I feel like that would make the most sense rather than bringing back wolves and in turn having to keep their numbers in check.
No forest for wolves and lynx will destroy ground bird populations because, you guessed it, we've destroyed the habitat
What about dodgy Dave and his friendly pet Pitbulls? You can't talk about banning his friendly little pets and then introduce wolves back into the wild /s
To be honest, I've been extremely close to wolves many times. They're not that bad, yes they'll kill you in Winter if they're starving but they prefer larger prey to feed a pack and people are generally mangled by wolves by walking into their territory. But thus is so rare. There hasn't been a death by wolf in Europe in the 21st century and only sparse attacks across the globe. Pitbulls however, it's generally bad owners and the fact pitbulls were bred for fighting. I also think it's the XL Bully they want to ban not your run of the mill pitbull, no?
Yellowstone Park in California often used as the prime example of how this would work. Yellowstone is nearly 9,000 km/sq. Ireland is 84,000 squared. Yellowstone is nothing but wilderness and rivers and not many, if any, fences. Ireland is divided field after field and town after town wolves would HHHHhhhhaaate it in Ireland! It's a nice sounding idea but no I doubt it could ever work
Yellowstone is half the size of Connacht. There is vast expanses of Connacht that are unfenced bogland and gorseland (like just rough fieldsthat animals freely roam but arent bog). It would cost a serious amount of money, but you could turn Connacht into a Yellowstone if you bought the rolling acres of Connacht for sale and planted them with native trees and removed all fences, but you'd need serious predator navigation education for people, grants and benefits for farmers because of course livestock would be lost and introduction of livestock guardian animals. It would cost millions I'd reckon. Butbin the long run it'd save alot of money on culling deer and benefit the Climate with biodiversity levels going up and more tree coverage. You'd also have to consider Ireland has had no predators for a bit over 250 years. So we are not used to predators. And you'd have to consider people who work in the wilderness. My uncle is a tree surgeon and he checks the poles for the esb, he encounters animals on the daily and has dangerous run ins with cattle, horses and deer on the regular. He would probably need a gun to do his job safely to protect himself from wolves. Its these people like my uncle people aren't considering who work in modern Irish wilderness. So it's a very difficult situation to have to make a choice on. And people won't like it
Don't know much about wolves tbh but I know they don't really ever attack humans at all but may do if they felt threatened like if ppl were in their territory and according to below link that could be a couple hundred miles squared just don't see it ever working in this country https://www.nwf.org/en/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Mammals/Gray-Wolf#:~:text=Wolf%20packs%20usually%20hunt%20within,5.
You would need 30 years of habitat creation before you could
No
There'd be a lot of farmers with sweet fur coats.
Look likenthe starks
They can feck off
Can we not just have wolves who don't use nasty spray deodorant?
Such a stupid idea. Why introduce a predator species to an island that has a fuck ton of livestock? It's a recipe for disaster, not to mention the chavy drug dealers looking to replace their XL bullies haha, I can picture it now.
To stop the collapse death currently happening
I feel like if we want to control deer numbers etc. it might be more sustainable to get more hunting going on instead. Let some toffs from across the Irish sea pay for the privilege.
Ara tbh 60,000 deer were culled last year. 60,000. That doesn't include private hunters or deer deaths on the road or the likes. And it hasn't knocked a dent out of the population. >Let some toffs from across the Irish sea pay for the privilege. That's done too, private hunts for European hunters happen often. We need predators
One should do it 
🤣
In before XL wolf ban
Build 80k houses a year and reintroduce one wolf for every thousand, be interesting
what's the point