Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has called for the reintroduction of wolves into Ireland to re-wild parts of the countryside.

He put forward a motion for more natural woodlands in place of short-rotation plantations in the Dáil on Tuesday.

“Bring back a sense of wilderness, bring back ecology, in a sense that would prey on deer which are holding back forestry at the present time,” Ryan told RTÉ.

“You see what happened in other countries, that you restore natural ecosystems that are more resilient, that are more attractive and that have more natural diverse systems in a whole range of different ways,” he added.

Response

Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan rejected the idea of the reintroducing wolves, tweeting: “The reintroduction of a large predator which has been absent for 250 years might undermine existing conservation programmes and would do considerable damage to farming.”

This response is similar to the one she gave to Independents 4 Change member Mick Wallace in June earlier this year when she wrote that her department had “no plans” to reintroduce wolves to Ireland as doing so would be “fraught with difficulties”.

She added that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature had developed guidelines on reintroductions and conservation translocations and that one of the first requirements is that “there should … be strong evidence that the threats that caused any previous extinction have been … removed”.

Therefore, “any feasibility assessment for the reintroduction of the wolf to Ireland would fall at this first hurdle”.

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