Environmental group lodge complaint over deer fencing

AN environmental group has made an official complaint to the European Commission about a new fencing system to keep deer out of some ancient oakwoods in Killarney National Park.

The Killarney Nature Conservation Group (KNCG) yesterday claimed the park authorities had “desecrated” an important ecological landscape by erecting deer fencing.

The aim of the fencing is to allow young trees to grow in an area of woodland that had been cleared of rhododendron trees.

But, the KNCG, through spokesman Michael O’Sullivan, maintained the project was fundamentally flawed in that excluding all grazers would substantially alter the woodland ecology.

“These woodlands and the native herd of red deer have co-existed for probably 9,000 years or so. Red deer are naturally woodland animals and to exclude them from these woods would be to deny them a very important winter and calving refuge,” he said.

He claimed pre-famine settlement walls, lazy beds and a stone cottage had been damaged.

The €700,000 fencing project is being carried out by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) with support from the Forest Service.

Killarney National Park manager Eamon Meskell said the Forest Service had been given approval by the EU to proceed.

Regarding claims that damage had been done in the course of the work, he said any damage would be repaired once the project was finished.