Killarney National Park yesterday strongly defended one of the costly deer-fencing programmes intended to protect woodland and wildlife.
The €700,000 deer-fencing programme to allow for regeneration of some 200 acres of ancient oak and yew woods in Killarney has met with objections from a local conservation group and a complaint has been lodged with the EU Commission claiming the fencing is in breach of EU habitats directives.
The park enjoys several protective designations as well as the rare Unesco biosphere reserve designation.
The conservation group said the non-conventional fencing that is being delivered to remote areas of the park by helicopter will lead to lack of biodiversity and the proper way to protect the woods was to cull the deer and wild goats to sustainable levels, as well as excluding all sheep.
The group, the Killarney Nature Conservation Group, also said the fencing programme was against the stated objectives of the new park management plan and they had lodged a complaint with the EU Commission, which is part-funding the project.
However, on a guided tour for the media of the area, National Parks and Wildlife Service manager Eamon Meskell yesterday said Brussels had given the go-ahead for the project, which was delayed for some months because of the complaint.
Sited by GPS to allow deer to migrate through glades, the fencing off of blocks of trees among 375 acres of woodland and bog has now resumed.
The project is financed under the EU's Native Woodlands Scheme administered by the Forest Service and is one of the biggest projects in the country undertaken under the scheme.
The blocked or enclosed areas represent some 8 per cent of the national park's total oak woodlands. Because of the delay, just one and a half of the 11 blocks have so far been completed, Mr Meskell said. An expensive rhododendron clearance programme in the 1990s had removed the exotic plant but no new seedlings were growing. This was because of grazing by feral deer and other large animals. "Exclosures", as they are also known, had been used in the park previously and were highly successful, Mr Meskell said.
Killarney would have to cull the native deer to unsustainable levels if it were to protect the woods simply by culling, Frank McMahon, district conservation officer, said.
Some of the sessile oaks were 250 years old and in some areas they were up to 400 years in age, but no new saplings were emerging, Jervis Good, ecologist with the NPWS southern division, said.
Mike O'Sullivan, spokesman for the Killarney Nature Conservation Group, said the group would not allow the National Park and Wildlife Service to "garden" one of the most evocative and unspoilt landscapes in Ireland into a chess board of fenced-off enclosures.