Calls for management plan as sika overrun Irish park

An Irish conservation group has called for a deer management plan after a study recorded the dominance of sika deer. 

ReWild Wicklow set up 47 remote cameras across 220km² of private and public forest land, including sections of the Wicklow Mountains National Park. The non-native deer were recorded at every camera site and were found to have accounted for 72% of the 6,300 wild mammal events, from a total of 180,000 photos over a two-month period to November 2023. 

The report said sika deer were also the most dominant species by a large margin between 2021 and 2022, and that there is now an indication of a significant increase in their abundance. 

Journalist Will O’Meara, who stalks deer in the Wicklow Mountains, said “While the distribution of sika deer across Wicklow has increased, there is no evidence that the total number of sika in the county has increased. There have been significant measures taken to aid and increase the number of deer culled. 

“I would be interested to know how much of the study was conducted in the National Park, as hunting is forbidden there except by rangers, who are under-resourced and over-tasked.”