THE SURVIVAL of the red grouse in Ireland where it has lived for 5,000 years requires an urgent national management plan as they are in serious risk of extinction, according to a new report.
Part of that plan to save the bird species will be an immediate ban on the import of red grouse from Britain, said the Irish Grey Partridge Conservation Trust.
It said a recent four-year study of Ireland’s red grouse known in Irish as “Cearc Fraoigh” showed an “alarming decline in the genetic variation of the native population” based on DNA sampling.
The study funded by the Native Species Conservation Committee of Dublin Zoo and Fota Wildlife Park was carried out by the Irish Grey Partridge Conservation Trust, UCD and the University of Uppsala, Sweden, took feather samples from birds from the four provinces.
“Research findings indicate that a significant percentage of Irelands red grouse populations are genetically bottlenecked, and in serious risk of extinction,” said the conservation trust statement.
“As the distribution of Ireland’s red grouse continues to contract, the situation for grouse on raised bogs is even worse,” it said.
“Ireland’s lowland boglands all contained grouse in the past and 1 million acres of raised bog covered the midlands until this century. The destruction of these bogs was significant in causing the isolation now experienced by the remaining birds.”
Dr Barry McMahon, a UCD researcher, said Ireland was now peppered with isolated populations of red grouse caused by loss of habitat.
“Apart from other aspects of red grouse biology, our study shows what are the consequences of habitat fragmentation coupled with decades of neglect and if we don’t act soon isolated populations will disappear,” he said.
The study also found Ireland’s red grouse are genetically separate from grouse in the UK.
“In light of recent findings the importation of red grouse to Ireland from the UK should cease immediately. We now have enough evidence to treat Irish red grouse as a separate management unit when it comes to their conservation,” said John Walsh, chairman of the Irish Grey Partridge Conservation Trust.
He called for an all-Ireland action plan for the survival of the red grouse which he described as an emblematic bird of the Irish uplands which would respond spectacularly to science-based management plans.
The most recent survey of red grouse populations found only 4,200 calling red grouse across the whole of the Republic and there were only 1-3 pairs in the areas which were occupied by birds.