Protecting wildfowl - Mink pose a big threat to bird life

ALMOST anyone who enjoys a walk along the waterways of Ireland or the sound of songbirds in their garden will more than likely have a tale of absent friends to relate.

A river walk is no longer the time or place to watch waterfowl in numbers previously enjoyed. Coot and water hens, once commonplace, are almost a novelty in too many places.

Ducks struggle to rear enough ducklings to sustain their populations on our rivers and lakes. Even nesting on the remote islands of our lakes no longer offers a refuge to nesting wildfowl.

The mink, an unwelcome species widespread because of escapes from mink farms, is blamed as the main culprit. That opinion, strongly held by anyone who has watched a clutch of ducklings reduced by ones and twos each day until there are none left, may soon have the benefit of scientific assessment.

Research is underway at University College Galway to quantify the mink population and to try to understand how much damage they cause and the extent of control measures being implemented.

That research in relation to cats has already been completed in Britain, where they were identified as the greatest animal threat to birds.

If the UCG research confirms the opinion of most anyone who knows a Friesian from a zebra, a cockatoo from a corncrake — that mink have a profound impact on wildlife — it will be necessary to consider if we should do something to curtail our North American interloper.

White-tailed and golden eagles, as well as red kites have been thankfully reintroduced to areas of Ireland where they were once popular before human intervention made them extinct. How ironic it would be then if we had to consider the reintroduction of species we allowed to be greatly reduced because we did not take action to control mink.

It is pointless to deny man’s great impact on wildlife through habitat destruction or pollution but it would rub salt into the wound if we allowed the balance of our wildlife populations to be changed utterly by the predations of mink.

There is much more to responsible management of the countryside than releasing eagles, declaring sites of special interest or fighting for rights of ways for walkers. Removing mink from our countryside may not be palatable to everyone but that does not make it any less necessary.