What was the state of nature here 500 years ago?

Lee Raye studies medieval and early modern descriptions of flora and fauna to find out

The Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife. Wolves hunted here 250-500 years ago and capercaillie were still found in Irish woodland

What was nature like before the modern period? This is the question my new book, The Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife, out this week, aims to answer. By mapping historical records of wildlife, I’ve been able to show just how exciting the nature of the island of Ireland was in the past.

I've found that 250-500 years ago, Wolves and White-Tailed Eagles still hunted widely, and Red Kites as well as Grey Partridges and Corncrakes were still widespread. Black Rats had not yet been replaced by today’s Brown Rats; the Red-legged Partridge was only beginning to be introduced, and Common Cranes roosted in the wetlands alongside Grey Herons.

Records of Wolf 1529-1772 CE in The Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife by Dr Lee Raye

Many of the species I found will be familiar to anyone with an interest in Ireland’s wildlife. But some of the wildlife described might impress even experienced ecologists. I’ve pulled together data from more than 200 primary sources, written by naturalists, travellers, and historians, and used that to discuss the status and distribution of 150 different species in Britain as well as Ireland.

In this period Ospreys and Bitterns still hunted in the water, the Capercaillie (large woodland grouse) could still be found in Ireland’s woodlands, and marine fishers still caught the Angelshark and Common Skate.

Some of the conclusions I come to in the Atlas may be especially controversial. Rabbits are recorded in sources from the time period on 25 sites around Ireland, but almost all of these are on islands or along the coast: This actually matches with the situation in Scotland and Wales where Rabbits seem to have been rarely found inland in the time period.

On the contrary, a few species of freshwater fish (Bream, Rudd, and especially Pike) were actually already widespread here during the early modern period. These freshwater fishes cannot survive in the sea. Because of that, after the end of the last Glacial Period, they were only traditionally thought to have been able to re-colonise south-east England before the sea levels rose and isolated Britain as well as Ireland from the continent. Based on this idea, it is sometimes assumed that freshwater-exclusive fishes were only widely introduced to Ireland over the last few centuries. This does not quite fit with the evidence from the early modern period, where the Pike for example was recorded by 15 Irish sources in the 17th century alone. This fish was also relatively widely recorded in Scotland and Wales in the time period. All of this evidence might support the native status of the species previously argued by geneticists such as Debbi Pedreschi and others.

There are of course difficulties with data this old: It can be difficult to identify the sites being referred to when the data was produced so long before Eircodes, GPS co-ordinates — and even the grid reference system — especially when so many places have had their names changed.

Records of white-tailed eagle in Britain and Ireland in 1529-1772 CE from The Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife by Dr Lee Raye

The data from the west of Ireland is especially poor, given that this is the time of the transplantation to Connacht. This data also comes from a time before Linnaeus systematised the nomenclature, meaning that it can be hard to identify the species intended.

The early naturalists were aware of some of these problems and even tried to address them in some ways, by describing their sites in comparison to other surrounding sites; trying to record the wildlife of under-recorded areas; and using multiple scientific and common names for each animal so that others could recognise the species intended.

Dr Lee Raye afHEA FLS Associate Lecturer Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Open University

Of course, at times the early naturalists made dubious claims. There are a handful of records from early modern Ireland referring to Black Grouse, which I think might be accurate, despite their dismissal by previous readers, but the records of the Bustard are harder to believe — might they have referred to a population introduced for hunting?

The records of Irish Wildcats and Beavers are the most fanciful, and perhaps to be discounted entirely.

• The Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife is out now and is available from PelagicPublishing.com

Dr Lee Raye afHEA FLS is an associate lecturer in the Open University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences