Keep foreigners out of Ireland! - Coping with invasive species

SOME non-native species, animals or plants, represent a huge threat to our natural flora and fauna and the environment that sustains them. 

Victorian collectors and, possibly, the deference accorded to those wealthy enough to travel and bring exotic species back to our shores, have had a considerable and unwelcome impact on the world around us.

Grey squirrels supplanting native reds, Sika deer inter- breeding with diminished stocks of pure, native red deer, mink escaping from fur farms and causing something approaching carnage among ground-nesting birds are some of the issues raised by importing non-native animals. In recent years there have been suggestions that chub have been smuggled into some rivers. If this is the case then native fish stocks are in for a hard time from this predator.