Irish wolves thrived in great forests

THREE-TOES, one of South Dakota’s most notorious outlaws, was easily tracked; having lost toes to a metal trap his footprint was recognisable.

It still took 159 trappers 13 years to hunt down and kill him. Las Margaritas, a New Mexico wolf, was even more extraordinary.

One of the last surviving wolves in the lower 48 States, she would uncover the traps set for her and urinate on them. A fanatic named McBride, having pursued her on horseback for 11months, found her Achilles heel; she liked to roll in the dying embers of campfires. McBride set a trap, lit a fire over it and that was the end of poor Margaritas.

The persecution of wolves in the United States was a rerun of the ones which took place in Europe centuries earlier. During the Elizabethan and Cromwellian periods in Ireland, wolves were lumped with ‘woodkernes’, the rebellious terrorists of the day. Oddly, the down-trodden natives don’t seem to have sided with the wolves against their common oppressors. At any rate no larger than life wolf personalities, such as Three-toes or Las Margaretas, are remembered here. Nevertheless, the ghost of this iconic predator still haunts us. Wolves live on in our language, place-names and folklore. Now, a definitive account of this lost animal has appeared; Wolves in Ireland, a natural and cultural history is the fruit of two decades of meticulous research by Kieran Hickey of University College Galway. This work of scholarship, despite its wealth of detail, is entertaining and readable. With Gary Wilson’s photographs of Dublin Zoo’s wolf pack, the book will appeal to naturalists, hunters and local historians.

Radio-carbon dating of excavated bones shows that wolves were in Ireland 28,000 years ago. These ancestors of the domestic dog rubbed shoulders with giant Irish deer and encountered the country’s first human immigrants. The extensive woodlands and scrub which covered much of Ireland, suited wolves and they thrived until the destruction of the great forests which began in Neolithic times. Hickey estimates 1,000 wolves remained in 1600 when the tree-cover had been reduced to 12.5%.

Regarded as quarry to be hunted and vermin to be exterminated, their skins were harvested and exported. The location and death of the last Irish wolf has been disputed. Hickey thinks that one killed on Mount Leinster on the Wexford-Carlow border in 1786 may have been the last. He speculates that, had wolves survived until the Great Famine of the 1840s they might still be with us today.

The wolf’s influence on culture and language has been extensive; Hickey devotes a chapter to names for this top predator and the family and place-names associated with it. Clare and Donegal, with nine wolf-derived place-names each, lead the field. Although packs roamed within 10km of the capital city until at least the middle of the 17th century, there is only one reference to wolves among Co Dublin place-names; ‘Feltrim’ comes from the Irish ‘Faeldruim’ meaning ‘wolf-ridge’.

The Irish wolf was isolated here for at least ten millennia, not long enough, Hickey thinks, for it to become a distinct species. It would probably have been recognisable as a sub-species, as the Irish stoat and hare are today. However no bones, mounted specimens, or even the trophy head, of a modern Irish wolf survive.

Businessman Paul Lister wants to re-introduce wolves to a 9,600 hectare estate in Scotland. Hickey doesn’t think that a similar project could be undertaken here, even if public misgivings about such a proposal were overcome. Our biggest National Park, Glenveagh, with 16,000 hectares, may not be large enough for even one pack. The prospects for wolf-tourism in Ireland are dim.

* Wolves in Ireland, a natural and cultural history by Kieran Hickey is published by Open Air with the support of the Heritage Council.