Anja Murray: We have to take on the role of the wolf in managing our woodlands
Wolves Son As Means Were ‘mac Tíre’, Fondly In Land The Of Translated Medieval Early Which Ireland, Known Directly
At the weekend I found myself in a cinema full of children spontaneously howling like wolves. They were imitating the behaviour we were all watching on the big screen — the characters in the animated film .
The story is set in Kilkenny in 1650, during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Forests all around are being cleared for livestock by woodcutters, under orders from the authoritarian ‘Lord Protector’ (aka Oliver Cromwell). The filmmaker, Oscar-winning Cartoon Saloon, has been careful to ensure that the historical context is accurate. The characters at the core of the film, however, are mythological beings who are human by day, wolf by night.
This is fantasy, but not that far removed from ancient Irish beliefs about wolves. In mythology, the entrance to the otherworld was through the ground: wolves who had their dens in caves were seen to be able to move between this world and the otherworld.
Wolves were also seen to symbolise power and strength, and as such, were highly respected. In early medieval Ireland, wolves were fondly known as ‘mac tíre’, which directly translated means son of the land. Fionn Mac Cumhaill was said to love the music of wolves.
Irish Wolf dogs, different to the present-day wolfhound, were famous for their strength and skill at guarding livestock from wolves. Wolf dogs were brought to Rome during the height of the Roman Empire, and adopted by a Persian Shah in the late Middle Ages. For millennia, Ireland was famous both for its wolves and its wolf dogs.
The situation was transformed with the arrival of Elizabethan settlers. Wolves had already been driven to extinction in England by then. If Ireland was to be civilised, the wild Irish wolves must be eradicated, along with the rebels who tended to hide out in the wild woods. New settlers built manors and created new tracts of farmland for cattle and sheep rearing. Cromwell commanded that wolves be destroyed, directing the government to set a generous bounty on the heads of wolves. Top rates were paid for breeding females. When land was allocated to settlers, it came with an obligation to hunt and kill set quotas of wolves each year. Complete taming and domination of the landscape was the objective. During this period, wolves were reduced to scant, ghost populations and the cover of native woodland went from 12% in 1600 to just 2% by 1700.
Wolf facts for #InternationalWolfDay 🐾
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🐺 They're ecosystem engineers
🐺 They're intelligent
🐺 They can eat 9kg in one sitting!
🐺 They're have a complex communication system
🐺 They once roamed the UK but were hunted to extinction
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After a reign of more than 25,000 years in Ireland, the last Irish wolf was said to have been killed in 1786, on the slopes of Mount Leinster in County Carlow. The ecological ramifications of eradicating woodlands and wolves from the landscape have been enormous. For more than 20,000 years, wolves had been the top predators here, hunting in small packs, working closely together to raise young and to hunt prey. Deer are what they mostly hunt and eat, so deer populations were kept in check. For this, wolves are still considered saviours of wooded landscapes across the globe.
Deer have a major impact on the health of woodland habitats. They move about in herds, grazing on low growing vegetation. A herd of deer can obliterate the lower layers of flowering plants from the woodland floor. Without the blanket of woodland herbs, such as wood anemone, primroses, wild violets, woodrush, ferns, and even bramble, the many invertebrates who depend on them are bereft of essential resources such as food and homes. Populations of wild bees, bugs, moths, butterflies, spiders, crickets, snails, flies and more are profoundly impacted. This in turn depletes the resources available for resident birds, bats and other mammals.
As well as eating low-growing herbs, deer are also keen on tree seedlings and saplings. When all the young hazel, hawthorn, rowan, oak, ash, and other broadleaf trees are nibbled in to nonexistence by too many deer, the woodland is missing its middle layers, and there are no young trees to replace mature trees when they die, which means that woodlands are unable to regenerate naturally. The absence of natural regeneration is the biggest challenge to natural woodland conservation and establishment in Ireland today, along with invasive species such as rhododendron and cherry laurel.
Deer also strip bark from mature trees, either killing them directly or making them more vulnerable to disease. This is of course a natural process, but when deer populations are unnaturally elevated as the unintended consequence of human interventions, the problem becomes severe.
In short, deer are enormously detrimental to the health of woodland wildlife. Some studies have found that where top predators, such as wolves, are present, they not only keep the deer numbers down, but also keep the deer on the move, preventing overgrazing in any one particular area. Without wolves, it is imperative that we control the deer population, actively monitoring their population and actively culling herds. We have to take the role of the wolf.
Across Europe, wolf populations have been recovering, mostly due to natural recolonisation of former historical range. In 2023, wolves have been detected in the wild across all EU Member States except Ireland, Cyprus and Malta, nor are they present in the wild in England, Wales or Scotland.
I am often asked if there are plans to reintroduce wolves in Ireland. The answer is no. Even enthusiastic advocates of rewilding tend to agree that Ireland is not ready, psychologically, for wolves to be reintroduced. There is also concern that Ireland has insufficient habitat for wolves, as our woodland cover remains among the lowest in Europe too. The uplands here are heavily farmed for sheep, which in turn prevents wild woods from establishing as would occur naturally.
Ireland’s National Parks are very small by European standards, and these too are lacking the ecological integrity of healthy wooded habitats.
The best we can do is recognise the extent to which nature in Ireland is in a much-diminished state, and take steps to restore wild woodlands, especially in upland areas. We don’t all have to howl like wolves, as the children in the cinema did, but we do need to take on the role of wolves, controlling deer populations so that the woodlands that do exist have a chance to recover.
Reconnecting with our knowledge of the natural world, and fluency with our folklore, will certainly help in this objective.