Eoghan Daltun: We need to talk about a missing native Irish species — the lynx

If we had lynx back in Ireland, they’d be working away 24-7 to control deer numbers and behaviour

Eoghan Daltun: "Increased farm subsidies for any land known to be part of a lynx territory would go a very long way towards a successful programme, with farmers and rural communities seeing them as an asset, rather than a liability imposed from outside"

Ireland has a massive problem with wild grazers. Visit a pocket of native woodland anywhere in the country and, more likely than not, you’ll see no young trees, no seedlings — none of the extremely rich ground flora that should be present. From about head height down, the forest is stripped bare. Go to Killarney National Park, for example, Ireland’s largest and most important remaining piece of native woodland, and that’s exactly what you’ll find: a dying forest.

The cause is very simple: far too many deer, feral goats, and in some cases livestock like sheep. Evolution arranged that herbivores breed very prolifically: it’s essential to maintaining numbers in the face of predation, which is a feature of any healthy natural ecosystem. But here in Ireland, all our larger natural predators — wolves, bears, and lynx — were driven to extinction. As a result, deer densities have exploded.