On arrival to the visitor centre at the Burren National Park in Kilfenora, Co Clare, the most obvious display is that of a stuffed goat. It’s a striking animal, with long, curved horns and mottled coat, head slightly tilted, throwing a sceptical stare at the onlooker.
The Burren was once known for its brown bears, the bones of which are found from caves in the region, but which are now absent, along with all the other large, wild animals that would have roamed this landscape, including wolves, wild boar and red deer.
Maybe for this reason, the feral goat, a domestic animal now roaming the Irish countryside, fills a gap left behind by these truly wild animals. The National Parks & Wildlife Service (NPWS) seem to think so, using the goats on displays of the park’s flora and fauna.
The NPWS says that “unlike other areas of the country” the goats “benefit most Burren habitats since they help keep rank (old growth) grasses and hazel scrub at bay”.
RM Block
However, as indiscriminate herbivores, feral goats will eat pretty much anything in front of them. The National Biodiversity Data Centre (NBDC) says they present a “medium risk” of being invasive in Ireland while their grazing pressure, combined with that of wild deer and hundreds of thousands of free-roaming sheep, is recognised as a leading barrier to forest establishment.
The feral goat in Ireland is a descendant of wild ancestors that evolved in the arid landscapes of southwest Asia. Their progenitors live wild today in the mountains of Iran and the countries of the Caucuses. It is believed they were brought to Ireland 3,000-4,000 years ago.
The Old Irish goat is recognised by the Department of Agriculture as a “native rare breed”, just like Droimeann cattle or Connemara ponies. Preserving old breeds of domestic animals is an important aspect of biodiversity conservation that is recognised in international agreements such as the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
However, few (less than 100) purely Old Irish goats survive, the vast majority being hybrids or other domestic breeds. There are no population estimates for feral goats in Ireland although the NBDC has mapped their distribution, showing hotspots in the Burren, the Beara Peninsula and Co Fermanagh, with small populations distributed elsewhere.
The NPWS is undertaking a census within the Burren National Park where the population is believed to be rapidly increasing which, given the lack of any natural predators, is not surprising.
Goats, like any of our free-roaming herbivores, are capable of over-grazing. On a visit to the Burren earlier this year, the goats did not appear to be damaging the important grassland and woodland habitats. However, in the absence of natural predators and without a culling programme, it is only a matter of time before the population gets out of hand. Goats will eat sapling trees, thereby preventing any natural regeneration and they can cause severe damage within established native forests by stripping out all the vegetation and even killing trees by eating the bark.
The use of goats as “conservation grazers” – the use of domestic animals, including cattle and horses, to meet nature conservation goals – is gaining popularity in Ireland, reflecting a movement across Europe that is using large herbivores to rewild landscapes.
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The conservation organisation, Rewilding Europe, has been reintroducing free-roaming wild horses, bison and even a near analogue of the extinct wild cattle, the aurochs. What they describe as “natural grazing” is part of a drive to reintroduce natural ecological processes to areas that have been modified by people for many centuries.
They note that “the plants and animals we know today from our managed fields, meadows, forests and moors, have evolved from natural plains, herbaceous fields, thickets and ancient forests ... This natural wealth was largely the result of the presence of large grazing animals”.
Absent from their plans are sheep and goats, species that have not co-evolved in the lowlands of western Europe and so have no natural ecological role. In Ireland the conversation is further muddied by the fact that there is no evidence that any of these large herbivores (cattle, horses, bison) were living wild here after the last ice age.
In the Burren there is concern that native woodland will overtake the flower-rich meadows that have traditionally been maintained by winter grazing cattle. Whether herds of feral goats can replace this function has not been established, while there is debate that this should be a concern at all with levels of native woodland in Ireland miserably low, perhaps only 2 per cent of our island’s land surface.
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The debate about goats has gained prominence since 2021 when Fingal County Council began working with the Old Irish Goat Society to use the animals as part of a fire management programme on the Howth Head peninsula in Dublin.
In July I met the council’s biodiversity officer Hans Visser and Katie Abel of the Old Irish Goat Society. Much of Howth Head is a special area of conservation, mostly for its heath habitats, which were, until the 1950s grazed by domestic animals, including goats. This management is what produced the heath habitats, which is characterised by low growth of heather with thin, peaty soil.
With the ending of farming, the heath naturally reverts to native woodland, which is under way in some parts of Howth Head but until that happens the open, dry vegetation is extremely prone to fire. Much of the land has been burned repeatedly in the past 10 years, with a particularly large fire in 2021.
Fires are a threat to property and devastate the habitat, drastically reducing the plant diversity and replacing the low heath with either bracken or (flammable) gorse. This prompted Fingal to develop a fire plan.
The goats, because they are of the Old Irish variety, are low maintenance and need little to no supplementary feeding. The purpose of the programme is to graze down fire breaks; strips of land, roughly 20min width, to allow access to fire fighters and slow down the spread of flames.
The goats are confined to these areas using electronic collars (also known as virtual fences) while males and females are kept apart. The goats are fairly docile and so are not a bother to the many walkers that use the trails in this area.
The alternative to using goats is herbicide or maintaining the vegetation using machines, something which is difficult on rough terrain. The management of goats in Howth, therefore, is different from having free-roaming and free-breeding animals wandering the countryside.
The area being grazed is relatively small while the rest of Howth Head is free to develop into native woodland or be restored to heath habitat. The effectiveness of the programme has yet to be tested as there hasn’t been a big fire since its inception, something that may be down in part to increased awareness.
Other local authorities are looking to Howth to see how it could be applied elsewhere. But while the model is suited to small areas in urban settings, it would be a mistake to think it could be replicated across large expanses of uplands.
Calls for feral goats to be given protection in the Wildlife Act (which would restrict hunting) must be resisted, in favour of rewilding and ecological restoration that would reduce fire risk (wetter bogs and natural forests are not flammable).
Old Irish goats should be preserved as a heritage breed but only where they can be carefully managed, such as behind a fence.
