Oh deer, another foreign invader

ACCORDING to Dr Ferdia Marnel of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Ireland has a new wild mammal.

Muntjac are on the loose in Co Wicklow. There have been three reliable sightings of them to date. However, this is not good news; foresters claim that muntjacs destroy young trees. These animals don’t belong in Ireland and whoever brought them in has behaved most irresponsibly.

Also known as the ‘barking deer’, the muntjac is an elegant creature. Tiny by deer standards, a mature male is less than a metre long from nose to tail and weighs only 15kg. For comparison, a fallow deer buck, in the Phoenix Park, might reach 80kg. Muntjac have chestnut coats, pale bellies and rabbit-like tails. Tiny tusks project downwards from the upper jaw. The male’s short antlers resemble a goat’s horns. Females don’t have antlers. Broadleaved or mixed woodland is the preferred habitat. Saplings, ivy, fruit, acorns and berries feature in their diet.

Being native to the tropics, where the climate doesn’t change much throughout the year, muntjac can breed in any month. There are no rutting seasons, harems or herds. Instead, females live solitary lives on loose home ranges. The local buck will patrol several ranges, mating with each female in turn.

Unlike Irish stags, who take no interest in their offspring, muntjac bucks sometimes associate with their fawns. Captive ones groom the young although it’s not known if they do so in the wild.

There are about 11 kinds of muntjac, but scientists argue as to how they should be classified. In 1996 a new species, the giant muntjac, was identified in a zoo in Laos. The following year, another species, this time a tiny one, was found in Vietnam. Yet another was discovered the year after that. The ones in Wicklow are probably Reeves’ muntjac, natives of China. Their name honours JR Reeves, the Assistant Inspector of Tea for the British East India Company in the 19th century, who collected the type specimen.

England has a thriving population of about 40,000 muntjac. A few animals were brought to Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire 100 years ago but the muntjac living wild in England are not descended from them. Escapees from a zoo and released animals are the source of the population. Numbers are increasing steadily and the muntjac seems set to become Britain’s most numerous deer.

Here in Ireland, history is repeating itself. Back in 1860, Lord Powerscourt brought a sika deer stag and three hinds to his estate in Wicklow for hunting. These deer are native to Japan and the Wicklow herd was the first one to be established elsewhere in the world. There were red deer in Wicklow then. Although the sika is small, a stag weighing about 64kg, while the red is large, at up to 255kg, the two interbred and the animals roaming the Wicklow hills today are red-sika hybrids. Some of the Wicklow sika were brought to Killarney. Fortunately, they didn’t interbreed with the reds there.

The Phoenix park deer were introduced by another aristocratic landowner. The Duke of Ormond remained loyal to the Stuarts during the reign of Cromwell and, following his restoration to the throne, a grateful Charles II gave him land which included the park. The fallow deer, introduced by the duke, have thrived there ever since. Natives of southern Europe, fallows were first brought to Britain by the Romans and to Ireland by the Normans.

The red deer is usually regarded as a native but this claim has been disputed. An ancient red population was wiped out during the last Ice Age. Bones found since then are only 4,000 years old, suggesting that the animal may have been brought to Ireland by Neolithic people. Foreign reds have been released here more recently, so the ancient blood is tainted.

The little muntjac may not have a claim to Irish citizenship but it’s in good company. None of our deer, with the possible exception of the red, have much of an Irish pedigree.