Irish Wolf. British Wolf. Same Thing?

It may seem unimportant but  When did Ireland separate from mainland Europe?

A wide range of dates have been offered for Ireland to become a separate island, i.e. for the closure of land bridges between Britain and Ireland. Estimates have generally ranged anytime from about 10000 BC to 5700 BC.

Why is this important? For most people it is not but for wildlife historians such as myself it is very important. In Europe wolves, jackals and Old foxes as well as wild cats continued their lives having adapted to the conditions and landscapes there. Eventually the Old fox type was replaced by the New red fox (V. vulpes) and I believe that the European wild cat would have also looked much more different than it does today.

Separated from Europe the British wolf population was not affected by island dwarfism and studies in the 19th and early 20th centuries concluded that British wolves were large and of the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) type. To many this would make it a unique sub-species as it would have had to adapt to the British environment. Therefore it would be a unique island sub species.

above: an arctic wolf (c)2023 respective copyright owners

Which brings us to Ireland. It had wolves just as it had wild cats. The wolves were also large and the Irish bred the Irish wolfhound specifically to hunt them.  Separated from the British mainland the wolves of the island were also a unique sub-species and they were killed by the hundreds with huge shipments of wolf hides heading out of Dublin to the port of Bristol.

No real study appears to have been undertaken on remains -DNA, etc. This is something that I want to work on in the future along with Old fox and Old wild cat DNA.  The extermination of wolves was undertaken because they were wolves and even when they were remote and causing no problems to humans. There was an environmental crisis created by this crazed lupicide.

Forests and woodlands were chopped down and burnt simply to get wolves out of cover and into the open to kill. Historians often cite deforestation as being carried out for agricultural reasons and while agriculture benefited the mass destruction was due mainly to hunting. When the wolves and boar and other creatures were pushed out of cover they were systematically killed off -only after that did the fox become worthy of hunting. Ireland also saw deforestation for the sake of lupicide (wolf hunting).

We need to actually understand the animals we once had in Britain and Ireland and how humans not only exterminated them but what was done to the environment. It is important that we understand all of this and that children can learn and, we hope, fight more to prevent future extinctions whether foxes, badgers -any wildlife.  By 1860 the British red squirrel was gone, the Old wild cats and foxes were falling into extinction and even hares and deer (all 'replaced' with imported animals to help continue the 'sport of hunting'. 

We are -one of my colleagues, LM, especially- gathering more data on our extinct wolves and the only real obstacle is, of course, money. A slogan I hear again and again is "There is no money in wildlife work" and, yes, even when we are trying to reveal and learn from what we have lost. This should be a joint Irish -British project and I hope that combined efforts may yield results inb a subject that no one has really bothered with in well over a century despite all the more advanced methods we have.

Just never forget that Britain had a unique wolf species and Ireland had its own unique species. We need to find out more and educate.