I\u2019ve decided to get a licence to kill. Ireland\u2019s native woodlands are being eaten alive by overabundant deer. We have no wolves \u2013 they were hunted to extinction 2\u00bd centuries ago \u2013 so unless we reintroduce them (unlikely), it\u2019s up to us to do the killing. And most of us have ceded that work to hunters and farmers, as though the mess of conservation is someone else\u2019s problem to solve with someone else\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a natural-born killer; I find it stressful and unsettling to hold that kind of power over another species. But 15 years ago, I kept two pigs outdoors, and I made myself a promise: as someone who eats meat, I would help kill and butcher them myself and use every part of the pigs, nose to tail, but if I found it impossible to do, I would go vegetarian. I still eat meat. <\/p>\n
It was visceral. Two biscuits to position them for the stun, then seconds to winch, cut their throats, bleed out, and it was done. If you\u2019re reading this wincing over a sausage sandwich, it\u2019s worth holding this in mind: 3.3 million pigs are killed in Ireland each year, along with 1.8 million cattle, 3.2 million sheep and 100 million chickens. That\u2019s roughly 275,000 animals a day. In the time it\u2019ll take you to read this piece, 700 animals will be dead. <\/p>\n
Killing and butchering my pigs was pretty mentally and physically exhausting, but it made me realise that until then I\u2019d outsourced everything to someone else\u2019s hands. Deer need culling, and the byproduct is a free source of wild, high-protein, high-iron meat. So why not give it a go?<\/p>\n
Last year, I wrote about the ecological crisis unfolding in our native woodlands from deer pressure. I walked into a Wicklow wood with forester Paddy Purser and saw the damage: bark stripped vertically by deer teeth, saplings rubbed to death by antlers, everything browsed to bare stalks. Deer are hollowing out our native woods, leaving no understory and no next generation of young trees. Paddy gave me the timeline: unless deer numbers are managed, the impacts would be \u201ccatastrophic\u201d within a decade. <\/p>\n
In a crisis this urgent, every effort to make space for our native species is welcome, however big or small. Of course it\u2019s nicer to plant oak saplings or put up nest boxes, but in a world humans have broken, conservation and restoration also requires perpetual, unglamorous killing. <\/p>\n
It works on isolated islands. In 2022, a global study examined 150 years of invasive species removal across 1,000 islands; nearly nine out of 10 attempts were successful, creating conditions for recovery. The authors were clear in their conclusion, arguing that conservation is not happening fast enough to stop extinctions, and that invasive species are a \u201cprimary driver\u201d of native biodiversity<\/a> loss worldwide.<\/p>\n [\u00a0\u2018We don\u2019t have a plan\u2019: Invasive species take hold as action lags legislationOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Doing the work isn\u2019t easy. David Wiens, a wildlife biologist from Oregon, killed barred owls to save spotted owls. He described the experience of pointing the gun at the bird as \u201cextremely difficult\u201d, but the mathematics was fairly simple: without culling, one species could go extinct. Over six years, 3,000 barred owls were removed, and as a result, spotted owl survival improved.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t own a gun and am a complete novice. A few weekends ago I booked a two-day immersive deerstalking course in Tullamore, approved by the National Parks and Wildlife Service<\/a>. As a woman, I was in a tiny minority. The first day was theory: deer biology, firearms and the law, animal welfare, carcass handling and diseases. The second day was at the shooting range. <\/p>\n The instructors kept hammering one non-negotiable rule: only pull the trigger when you\u2019re absolutely certain you have an \u201cethical shot\u201d, which guarantees the animal will die instantly. \u201cProbably\u201d or \u201cmaybe\u201d isn\u2019t good enough; judging when not to shoot saves a potentially prolonged, unpleasant death. <\/p>\n It\u2019s not about conquering, it\u2019s about taking responsibility for the decision to kill, which also means processing and butchering the carcass (the shooting is the easy bit \u2026), using as much meat as possible and wasting nothing.<\/p>\n When invasive species such as Sika deer have no natural predators, humans become the only control. The work never ends. You need continuous effort and uninterrupted funding, otherwise it\u2019s a game of snakes and ladders: you\u2019ll soon be back where you started. <\/p>\n The Cairngorm Water Vole Conservation Project culled invasive American mink across 10,000sq km, creating the conditions for water voles to recover. But without constant effort, mink will quickly recolonise. The Scottish Mink Initiative, launched in 2011, has since expanded across a much larger area of just under 30,000sq km. <\/p>\n Next month, I\u2019ll go out with friends to shoot deer for the first time. I\u2019m not looking forward to the killing bit and my actions won\u2019t change the world (or even the wood) but it\u2019s a collective effort. And the venison \u2013 obtained without market mediation from an industry that processes 275,000 animals a day \u2013 will be exceptional, and free<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve decided to get a licence to kill. Ireland\u2019s native woodlands are being eaten alive by overabundant deer.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[851,2885,25816,61,60,82,976,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-382977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-biodiversity","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-ella-mcsweeney","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-weekendreview","15":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}