Kill of the wild
Zoologist slams culling of deer as a failure and pleads with officials to use wolves
ZOOLOGIST Killian Mclaughlin is seen battling to save two endangered bears in his new Netflix documentary.
When you send a human hunter into the wild he shoots the deer he can see instead of the sick and weak animals
The Donegal conservationist, dubbed the Bearman of Buncrana, first came to public attention in his TV debut series Return of the Wild.
Next he will be seen on screen rescuing the threatened brown bears from Russia who have been caged in squalor with little provisions.
Killian, 38, told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “The bears were due to be transported to Ireland on 28 September.
“The export papers expired on 4 October. So we pulled it because the documents weren’t right.”
Killian, who runs the Wild Ireland sanctuary in Co Donegal, has been sending money to Dagestan in Russia to provide provisions to keep the bears alive.
He said: “We didn’t think it was worth the risk to head to the border with the bears because we were afraid that they wouldn’t let them through.
“We have been sending money for supplies, we hope they are okay. We’ve reapplied for all the papers to extend the times.
EXTINCTION
“We can’t conclude the last episode of the documentary until the bears are rescued and safe in Donegal.”
Located on the Inishowen Peninsula, Wild Ireland opened in October 2019 and provides a refuge for animals exploited, abused and hunted to the point of extinction.
Visitors encounter brown bears, wolves, lynx and wild boar on a journey through the sanctuary.
Passionate about deer, Killian told how the ancient Celts saw them as “magical” and warned against the culling trend.
He told us: “The main issue with deer is that when they don’t have a check or a balance in the ecosystem, they overpopulate.”
The first cull in Ireland was back in 1995, when 5,000 deer were culled, last year that rose to 55,000.
He said: “To me that screams, this isn’t working.
“When you send a human hunter into the wild, he shoots the deer that he can see, usually the boss of that territory, the big stag, he’s holding territories, keeping all the weak ones away.
“When you kill him all the weak ones have a free for all.”
He explained a rebound in population is then created.
Killian added: “The sick deer and younger ones start breeding younger,
When you have a healthy population of wolves in an area, TB in cattle reduces
the weak ones get a chance to breed or otherwise they would go off and die.
“If we had a natural predator, a wolf in the ecosystem, he would be taking those sick, weak and old animals out of the population.”
He explained why introducing wolves would cull the population naturally.
He said: “The cull is having the opposite effect of what’s intended, it’s increasing the deer population. I’m not talking about opening a gate and letting the wolves out of a cage.
“I say bring back nature’s own checks and balances, like in Yellowstone National Park in the States.”
Killian conceded that deer decimate crops and cause other problems for farmers, insisting that science backs the reintroduction of wolves.
He said: “When we have an overpopulation of deer, they eat everything. When it comes to cattle farming, we know deer are vectors of TB. We know from the evidence that scientists have presented in their papers, when you have a healthy population of wolves in an area TB goes down, because the wolves take the sick out of the population.”
He reiterated that there are alternative solutions to culling. He said: “We could introduce speed limits to stop road traffic collisions particularly on roads where deer roam at night.
“Deer are our last big mammal.
“If we villainise them we lose part of our heritage too.”