What does Heritage mean to us?...

The following pages describe some of the wildlife and habitats extant in County Waterford. County Waterford has a natural and rich heritage consisting of plants, animals and their habitats. If you spot anything unusual, please contact the Heritage Officer.

Waterford's Caves contain Lynx remains...

At a conference in Cork at the beginning of September 2006 (details at www.mindthegap.ie) one of Waterford's 27 caves was specially mentioned because Ireland's only remains of the Lynx, a spectacular wild cat, about Alsatian dog-sized with pointed tufts of hair on its ears, long legs and a very short tail.  This is not a scare article as the bones were found in about 1934 by archaeologist Hallam Movius, deep inside Kilgreany Cave near Cappagh.  The bones have been laboratory dated in the last few years and this showed that the animal lived over 8,500 years ago in the Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic) before farming came to Ireland.

Where lynx live now in Europe, they specialise in feeding on small deer like Roe Deer and young Red Deer.  Interestingly, it is now believed by archaeologists that Ireland's Red Deer are not native at all and were introduced thousands of years later in the New Stone Age (Neolithic). So what were Ireland's Lynxes eating all that time ago? It seems that the only likely prey for them then were hares and birds-a very unusual lynx diet.  Ireland has very few ancient native mammal species-most were brought in by people.

But the discovery of that one lynx bone does suggest there were native deer in Ireland but that nobody has managed to find their bones.  It also shows just how important caves are as a history book of Ireland's distant past.  Counties Waterford and Cork have among the most important of all Irish caves because this area was not as icy as elsewhere during the last Ice Age. They are the most likely places in which discoveries can be made in future about Ireland's ancient animal populations.

Some people in Scotland feel that Lynx should be re-introduced there, where they have also become extinct. The purposes would be to conserve the species by creating new populations; to control the numbers of deer which are now too high and are damaging woodlands and to add to the excitement of walking in the Highlands.  But Lynxes do sometimes eat sheep and not everybody would welcome them.