Reintroduction of wolves: Squandering vital credibility

This week’s call from Green Party leader Eamon Ryan for the reintroduction of wolves may be a subliminal mea culpa for the way we push one species after another towards extinction but it is also hopelessly romantic. Ireland’s last wolf was lost around 1786 and not even the most idealistic rewilder can argue there is any valid comparison between today’s industrialised landscape and pre-Famine Ireland, a patchwork of subsistence potato plots run by impoverished tenants.

Habitats have changed utterly as has their capacity to support predators like wolves. This evolution has been highlighted by the challenges faced by efforts to reintroduce raptors. Reintroduced wolves would face a similar, if not more challenging, fate and that would be another crime against wildlife. It seems even more reasonable to suggest we have more than enough species in need of urgent support if they are not to follow Ireland’s wolves into oblivion — far better to rescue corncrakes, curlews, bees, salmon and red squirrels than to contrive an unsustainable Jurassic Park for wolves.