Waterford Wildlife

Wednesday, 13th June 2012

Early Inhabitants Lynx Cat

There is little doubt that Waterford must have been one of the very first places in Ireland to establish a flora and associated fauna after the Munsterian Ice Age. Waterford was not affected by the later Midlandian Ice Age and so, an alpine flora not unlike that to be seen today in Greenland and Iceland must have been well established even when the midland ice sheets were still present. In time, the land became warmer. More plants became established. Trees now grew and birds and animals lived here. The first trees to become dominant were Pines and great forests of these spread from the south to the rest of Ireland. The climate continued to become warm and the Pines being lovers of a colder and wetter environment gradually gave way to more temperate tree – Oaks and Elms, also Junipers and Yews. Carbon dating of organic remains at Belle Lake indicates that the predominant plant life about 9,000 years ago was Oak and Elm. This was also the case in other parts of the County and in the warmer climate of 10,000 to 8,000 years ago, Yew and Birch were also common. Trees covered the Waterford landscape and this included the mountains as can be seen by the blanket bogs there today. We can imagine then what the bird life here was at the time. The common birds of oak and pine were probably present in large numbers: Jays and Crossbills, Woodpeckers and Blackbirds, Owls and by the waterways, Herons, Ducks, Cranes and Bitterns. Birds of Prey abounded and all in densities like that found in the forests of temperate Africa today.

Excavations carried out in caves at Shandon near Dungarvan, Ballinamintra and Kilgreany show that animals now extinct in Ireland also lived here. The Brown Bear roamed these forests together with the Irish Elk. Reindeer and Red Deer were plentiful and were preyed upon by packs of Wolves. Remains of the gigantic Mammoth were also found along with such predators as the Spotted Hyena, the Lynx and another feline, the European Wild Cat. Other animals more familiar to us today were also present.

This was the landscape of Waterford that greeted Man when he first arrived here 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. It was a landscape of virgin forest only inhabited by native plants and animals. This was when he first started to clear the forests in a slow moving tide that was to culminate in medieval times with the total destruction of Irish native woodlands and the animals associated with them.