Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
A SECTION OF Killarney National Park and Killarney Golf Course has been closed to the public to facilitate a cull of deer in the area.
The closure is set to continue during a culling programme which will last until mid-March.
Around 900 red deer – one of Ireland’s oldest mammals – now live in the Killarney area, along with around 500 Sika, according to estimates last year.
Their numbers have increased so much that they regularly roam the main roads at Ross and near St Mary’s Cathedral in the heart of Killarney town.
Collisions with cars as well as damage to woodlands has led to calls for culls in recent years.
Local representatives and bereaved individuals claim that deer roaming onto the road from the woodlands are responsible for at least two fatalities on the N72.
But the red deer are also an important tourist attraction in the town and are much liked by regular walkers in the area.
Representatives of deer management bodies are also being asked about animal welfare issues with a cull at the very end of the hunting season, when stags lose their antlers, the deer are in poor shape after winter and females are heavily pregnant.
Questions have been raised about whether pregnant hinds were being shot.
Meanwhile, the closure signs by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which were placed at a number of entrances to the park on Wednesday, warned of extreme danger with “deer shooting in progress”.
The cull is being carried out by trained National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers.
Marksmen are concentrating on red stags, and seeking to avoid the females because these will now be in calf, according to sources.
A cull is also underway of the upland red deer herd which is based in the Muckross and Mangerton areas.
Further closures of the Demesne area of Killarney National Park between 6am and 11am are planned in the coming weeks for further culls.
The total numbers culled up to August of last year in Killarney was 270, including both Sika and red deer.
The Irish Deer Commission said that although a cull is needed in Killarney, it must be done in a manner that has full regard for animal welfare.
“Carrying out a cull at at close of the legal culling season when females were heavily pregnant and stags were in poor condition is not best practice,” Damien Hannigan of the commission said.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Capture and release to less populated areas..
@Ferdia McManamon: have ever seen the damage deer does to farmland
@Ferdia McManamon: let them out beside the spire
@Brian Nevin: The Deer were there first …… not everything in this country should be about farmers
@Mary Mc Carthy: next time you are snowed in or dinner on the table please remember it’s the majority of farming families that keep the country going. Aka it’s farmers that use the machinery around cities as well.
@Paul Somers: Not all of us eat meat ……..
@Mary Mc Carthy: neither red or sika are native to ireland, irish native deer were wiped out 100’s of years ago
@Mary Mc Carthy: daw, farmers grow vegetables
@Brian Nevin:
There is more damage being done to Irish farmland by rushes, ragworth, thistles and dawking ( in summary slack land management) that 700 red deer would ever do. Highland regions of Donegal which mostly lies waste
should be an excellent home for the excess Red Deer ( The Seca has been imported from Japan in the 19C for shooting)
There may be a good reason for entirely culling the Seca which would give
the Red herd breathing (breeding) space.
@Moorooka Mick: introduce wolves!
@Brian Nevin: correct, I don’t think I could listen to fammers cry about “farm land” along with beef prices, poverty of farmers, isolated farmers in rural areas and anything else they can whine about. Also brian have you ever seen bambi? Dead deers ,no bueno
@Brian Nevin: Really . I never knew that . In most supermarkets the onions and carrots come from somewhere called France ?
@Mary Mc Carthy: don’t know were you shop but my local supermarkets are mostly selling irish veg except for the ones that don’t grow her or are out of season, but never mind as long as the deer are happy fe*k the farmers animals before humans
@Mary Mc Carthy: where do you think your veg, flour, eggs, milk etc comes from?
@Ferdia McManamon: what less populated areas? We’re overrun with deer everywhere. It’s a nationwide cull that’s needed.
@Mary Mc Carthy: fair play Mary, you know your onions.
@Brian Nevin: have you ever seen the damage that farmland does to Animals ?
@Mary Mc Carthy: Presumably you eat vegetables though
@Ray Finn: I agree. Traore would bate the shit out of any of em.
@Mary Mc Carthy: They damage crops too.
@Brian Nevin: I have – It’s very little.
@Ray Finn: yes…
@Ray Finn: definitely
@Mary Mc Carthy: Proud to be Irish in your profile yet you don’t buy Irish produce?
Reintroduce the grey wolf.
@Gareth: They would be shot on sight the minute they stray onto farmland with livestock.
@Gareth: it’s lovely to think of wolves being reintroduced, but there’s no area in Ireland that is isolated from humans that is big enough to support a wolf population. I would love to see wolves back on the island but we’d come into contact. Eventually someone would get hurt, then the wolves will be culled.
Unfortunately we cannot wind back the clock on this one.
@Davis Payne: I nominate Mayo
I’m supporting the Deer this time, not that they have a chance :((
In Latvia there are signs warning about Elks. So…if you hit them that’s your problem. Same in Norway i think.
@Damian Moylan: in Holland we have wildlife viaducts crossing the main roads which reduces the incidence of automobile/wildlife interaction. Secondly, maybe if people heeded the warning signs and obeyed the speed limit there would be even less tragic interaction between man and beast. I visit Fenit Co. Kerry (my mothers birthplace) regularly and I am stunned by the way cars travel along the back roads at ridiculous speeds on inferior roads.
@John Brendan Mullen: Yes in NL they have large concrete pipes under the highway called “animal crossings”, great idea. Lived there myself f 10 years, groetjes!
@Damian Moylan: groetjes terug Damian, they now have big wide, over the road viaducts/bridges, fully grown so wildlife see them as natural crossings, this is mainly in the s’hertogenbosch, on the road to Aleldoorn and a main crossing into Germany, a heavily travelled road which seldom has problems. Apparently, the grey wolf has returned to the area, spontaneously, having spread from Germany
@Damian Moylan: Not a problem in West Cork,the roads are so bad even the deer avoid them.
@Lionheart1: nice one….
Why not cull, cut up and serve their beautiful meat… To those who need food and not to rich restaurant places across kerry
@Joseph Molloy: eight legs of venison for €250- is that a good price or is it too dear. ?
@John Brendan Mullen: Very good! Haha
@Joseph Molloy: 5 years ago a Kerryman was charged with shooting and butchering a deer but, from memory, he got off because at the time of the alleged “crime” the accused was conviently drinking in the Healey-Rae Pub at the back of beyond!
Admittedly its a bit of an ordeal to drive down from the Lady’s Lookout to Muckruss late at night at certain times of the year but most locals prefer that to a massive cull which
will still not significantly reduce those driving risks. It only takes one deer to send your much loved set of wheels to the panel shop! (And dont mention the sheep for God’s sake)
@Joseph Molloy: in phoenix Park I think some is giving to the zoo to feed animals
@Moorooka Mick: wheels can bé replaced your loved ones can’t and if read story you would see at least 2 fatalities were of people were down to deer on road
@nelliekel: The road I referred to is in the Killarney National Park and I am amazed at the speed motorists drive at in an area dedicated to indigenous flora and fauna. IMO, not many will be killed at 40 KPH!
@John Brendan Mullen: you have spring lamb so can you call young deer bambi on a menue?? Just asking.
@Moorooka Mick: why not feed humans… Those who struggle on daily basis.
Shame it’s happening now at the end of the season. Very tasty.
More importantly it is a necessity to cull the volume.
For gods sake, in this age there has to be a more humane way of managing animal herd sizes. This is just, like hare coursing, a horrible cruel reason to entertain humans by hunting down innocent animals through no fault of their own.
Leave the deer! Start culling seagulls
So how many collisions have there been with cars in the past year, two, three? what is the value of a shot deer carcase and who profits from it?
@Damo Mac: there are speed limit and warning signs in these areas
@Sirius: Getting a call in the early hours of the morning to hear that your husband was almost killed when a deer leapt out of the trees at the side of the motorway at the very last second and came through his windscreen was horrendous. Garda report showed he was well within the speed limits and there were no skid marks on the road either.
@Charles Coughlan: you obviously don’t live somewhere with a large deer population, nearly had my car totalled by a doe jumping out of the ditch as I approached, doesn’t matter what speed you’re going if it jumps on your bonnet
Do the Deer cross the roadway or does the roadway cross the deer pathway?
What a warm and fuzzy article.
Introduce wolves. Problem solved.
@Thomas Sheridan: and who hunts the wolves?
@Shawn O’Ceallaghan: we get silver back grillers to sort them out
Damien Hannigan is dead right. Also to cull stags is pure nonsense as it does not control the population.
You can only control population by shooting females and especially young deer. But it is also not the right time of the year for that.
Also nonsense that there is no recreational hunting laws in Kerry and paying for the cull instead.
Kerry could generate money with that instead of wasting tax payers money
I would have thought, there is a lot more than 900 in Killarney. I’m living 60km from the national park and the deer around my area are a right nuisance… cull the lot of them. The country side will survive without them.
@John O Brien: that is, I’m afraid to say John, a very moronic statement.
I blame the Sex Pistols,
“Who killed Bambi. ?”
Where will venison be on sale
Poor Mary mcarthys of the world go for a Big Mac girl you don’t make a difference
Yum!!
Where will venison be on sale
Where will venison be on sale
Where will venison be on sale
have your say