New species of animals and plants probably won’t destroy our ecosystem

THE arrival of any new species of animal or plant in this country is almost invariably greeted with alarm by the authorities.

Alerts are issued and they’re full of emotive words like “invasive” and “alien” and extravagant claims are made about the dangers posed by it.

The tone sometimes verges on the hysterical, particularly when research biologists join in, all clamouring for grants to allow them to investigate the threat.

I can’t help observing that the sky often fails to fall on us.

The zebra mussel did not clog up all the inlets to our power stations and water purification plants.

The American mink did not exterminate all our water-hens and pheasants.

Okay, we might be better off without giant hogweed or grey squirrels, but their impact has turned out to be somewhat less than catastrophic.

The truth is that our native ecosystems are very resilient and, although it may take time, usually manage to absorb the impact of an arrival from abroad.

The population of zebra mussels is no longer growing at an explosive rate and they have even made some positive contributions to our inland waterways — helping to clean up algal blooms in lakes and providing a new source of food for some fish species, for example.

And eventually pine martens and buzzards managed to reverse the spread of grey squirrels, leading to a resurgence in red squirrel numbers.

These thoughts occur to me when I read the online alerts issued by the National Biodiversity Data Centre and Invasive Species Ireland about muntjac deer.

They are a miniature deer, about the size of a fox, that like to live in dense woodland or scrub in lowland areas but can also establish populations in suburban gardens or city parks.

They come originally from Asia — another name for them is Chinese barking deer because they are native to China and make a noise like a dog.

They are widespread in England and Wales and some other areas of Northern Europe.

They have been in Ireland for some years now, with a small number of sightings, mainly in the South and East, that have been verified by zoologists and a larger number of unverified records.

The best information is probably to be found in the blogs and forums used by deer hunters.

Muntjac were almost certainly introduced illegally into this country by some deer hunters.

However, the British population seems to have been founded by animals that escaped from Whipsnade Zoo and there are captive populations in Ireland, including one in the Wildlife Park on Fota Island.

And, despite dire warnings in the invasive species alerts, its hard to find any hard scientific evidence that these rather engaging little deer pose much of a threat to us.