Should we bring wolves back into Ireland?

Irish team researches the potential impact of wolves at Killarney, Glenveagh, Wicklow Mountains, and Wild Nephin National Parks

The Grey Wolf was hunted to extinction in Ireland in the 18th century. The last was shot in County Carlow in 1786

Ireland once had perhaps the highest density of wolves in Europe, nicknamed 'wolf-land' by the English who settled here in the 17th century. Wolf populations are now returning to small agricultural European countries, such as the Netherlands for example, which is half the size of Ireland and has three times as many people living there. Ireland is now the only remaining member-state of the European Union where wolves have not recolonised naturally, and as it is an island, will not do so. So why haven't wolves been reintroduced here?

New research from University College Dublin (UCD) conducted by Kilian J Murphy et al. working out of the Laboratory of Wildlife Ecology and Behaviour under Dr Simone Ciuti investigated the outcome of wolf reintroduction to Ireland using a modern simulation modelling approach. This approach allowed the research team to simulate the effect of wolf reintroduction to Ireland's national parks under a suite of different management and policy strategies, ranging from no management at all to landscape-scale interventions aimed at reducing wolf-human conflicts. The study ran more than 1,000 simulations to investigate if wolves could survive here, how they might use the landscape, and the consequences for deer and livestock within and around Wicklow Mountains National Park, Glenveagh National Park, Killarney National Park, and Wild Nephin National Park.