Hybridisation among deer and its implications for conservation.

Abstract

The Red Deer (Cervus elaphus scoticus Lonnberg, 1906) is generally considered to be the only native hoofed animal that has lived contemporaniously with man in Ireland (Charlesworth, 1963 and O'Rourke, 1970). Ecologically, the red deer appears to be an animal of the transition zone between forest and steppe (Dzieciolowski, 1969) and it was widely distributed in Ireland up to the mid-eighteenth century (Pococke, 1752; Moryson, 1735 and Scouler, 1833). The present distribution of the species in the wild is however confined to three of the thirty two counties of Ireland and only in County Kerry are the deer considered to be indigenous. The other two counties, Wicklow and Donegal, have stock of mainly alien origin...