Wild deer an issue for State

FARMERS and other private landowners are losing patience over damage caused by roaming wild deer, some of which stray outside the bounds of State property such as national parks.

In Kerry, for instance, deer are regularly found 30km and more away from Killarney National Park which has around 1,000 red and Japanese sika deer. Farming organisations and politicians have been calling on the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) to erect proper fencing to keep deer within the boundaries of the park. They say the State should be responsible for its deer as farmers are for their livestock.

Sean Sweeney gave us a guided tour of his land in the Tomies area, on the western shore of Killarney’s lower lake (Lough Lein). He pointed to numerous tracks made by deer through which they managed to get over ditches, through wire fences and onto his land.

“The situation is getting worse every year and deer numbers are increasing all the time. There’s not enough feeding for the deer within the park and starvation is driving them out. There’s a need for a serious cull. Numbers must be curtailed,” he said.

Mr Sweeney has spent up to €600 this year in repairing fences on his land, but deer have also eaten ivy, flowers and plants and damaged young trees around his house.

His cousin, Pat Sweeney, who lives nearby, reported seeing 25 deer in one of his fields, recently, and said he had 40 fewer silage bales last year because deer had eaten so much grass on his land. He further claimed the NPWS was legally obliged under national parks legislation to repair boundary fences on its property.

“The deer are doing what they like and no effort is being made to control them. They’re also a serious danger on the roads,’’ he claimed.

The NPWS, which has been carrying out culling operations, has said deer, as wild animals, can roam, while also pointing to difficulties in fencing a 26,000-acre national park and mountain terrain.

It’s an ongoing issue. In 1991, for instance, then Kerry FF TD John O’Donoghue asked in the Dáil for adequate fencing to be erected at Tomies to prevent deer trespassing on farms.

He was told by the relevant minister, the late Albert Reynolds:’ “Deer are wild animals and cannot ‘trespass’ on lands in the legal sense... While there is no legal obligation to erect fencing to prevent a wild species from passing between the park and private holdings, the Office of Public Works are prepared in the interest of good neighbourly relations to provide fencing materials to landowners in the Tomies area provided the landowners maintain any fences they erect.”