Wildlife Conservation in Ireland
The place to find information on Irelands's biodiversity and it's conservation from the perspective of a student of conservation behaviour.
‘Linking behaviour to populations and communities: how can behavioural ecology inform conservation?’
In November 2018 my class and I were lucky enough to be able to travel to London to attend the Behaviour Ecology Conservation Symposium in the Zoological Society of London chaired by some of the biggest names in the field such as Dr. Daniel Blumstein, Dr. Tim Caro and Dr. Oded Berger Tal!
What is Conservation Behaviour?
When I tell people that I am studying Conservation Behaviour, this is usually met with confusion because it is not something most people have heard about. My usual line of explanation is ‘it’s using knowledge on animal behaviour to help to conserve them’. While this is a good synopsis of what this relatively new field of conservation is, hopefully with this blog post and my post on the first conference I attended, I can give a better idea of what this actually involves!
15/11/18
Since there is just so much wildlife to talk about in Killarney park, I had to break the final day of the trip into two posts! Part 2 of my visit to Killarney National Park covers:
15/11/18
Killarney National Park
We spent the final day of our field trip in the biodiversity hotspot that is Killarney National Park. This is a 10,289 hectares park that is an important are of conservation for lots of species ranging from plants to invertebrates, fish, birds and mammals. Killarney National Park is part of the Killarney National Park, Macgillycuddy’s Reeks and Caragh River Catchment SAC (Special Area of Conservation) and is also a SPA (Special Protection Area) [1].
We first entered the park at the Muckross entrance where we walked down to Muckross lake. Here we discussed some of the species that are found in this park, both those that are listed as qualifying interests for it to be assigned as a SAC, and other species that occur here. To learn about some of the following habitats and species, read on!
14/11/18
On day 3 we travelled from Dingle to Killarney, making a few stops at places of interest. As we headed east out of Dingle on the N86 we made note of the old location of the Wildlife and Seal Sanctuary in Emlagh, Lispool. This sanctuary was established here in 2010 but since a storm in 2014 left the premises damaged [1], they relocated to Co. Wexford [2]. Prior to its relocation the sanctuary had resulted in some conflict in the community. Local fishermen were unhappy with the work the sanctuary was doing to save seals because they felt that the large seal population was negatively impacting their fish catch. This tension cumulated and reached its climax when on the morning of June 12th, 2012 workers at the sanctuary were met with two decapitated juvenile harbour seal heads, nailed to boards at the entrance of the sanctuary, accompanied with the words ‘RIP Cull’ and ‘RIP I am hungry’ [3, 4]. It is known that illegal culls of seals are carried out on Irelands coast, for example in 2004 when 50 young pups were found killed at the Blasket islands [5]. There have since been official calls for legal culls of seals to be carried out by for example deputy Michael Healy-Rae [6]. However, such action cannot be taken without adequate studies showing that the seal population is actually depleting fish catch and impacting fishermen livelihoods.
13/11/2018
On leaving the hostel our first objective was to get a sighting of Fungi the resident bottlenose dolphin of Dingle Bay. To find him we drove down to Beenbawn where Dingle Bay opens up to the Atlantic, because he is known to reside here. We spotted him swimming casually at the narrowest part of the opening of the bay, around the starboard buoy. We deployed two hydrophones into the water to try to record some vocalisations from Fungi.
Continue reading “Day 2: Dingle’s Resident Bottlenose Dolphin and Slea Head”
12/11/2018
Our field trip begins! 8 students and 2 lecturers loaded up 2 of the research vans and hit the road. We made made our way through Claire via the M18, passed Limerick where we made note of the beginning of the Shannon estuary, which is Ireland’s largest estuarine system. It has 500km2 of navigable water and stretches for 100km from Limerick city all the way down to the most westerly part of Co. Clare, the Loop Head peninsula [1]. From Limerick city we carried on via the N69 and headed towards Foynes, where we made our first stop. Continue reading “Day 1: Our Kerry Field Trip Begins”
Now, this is considered the boring stuff but I’ll give you a quick overview of some of the critical legislation in place in Ireland and some important lingo you should be familiar with….
Wildlife Conservation in Ireland 