Resources

The pine marten is native to Ireland and is one of our rarest mammals. Once common throughout the country, by the 20th century this species had become extinct from the majority of the island, surviving only in a few isolated and fragmented populations, mainly in the west. This decline was the result of hunting of martens for their fur, loss of habitat and both direct and indirect poisoning and persecution.

Practical measures to protect and benefit the pine marten. This leaflet aims to provide guidance on how to assess and minimise potential impacts of forest operations on the pine marten and recommend a set of measures to benefit martens that can be use d by forest managers and owners.

This report presents an analysis of The Vincent Wildlife Trust’s Irish bat box project and results of an online survey and was possible due to a grant from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

The Mostela consists of a wooden box containing a plastic tunnel and a camera trap within to record any animal that enters. It has successfully detected stoats in the Netherlands and the UK. The Irish stoat is a subspecies endemic to Ireland and the Isle of Man and, despite being widespread in Ireland, no information exists on its population status due to the difficulty of detecting it. We conducted a twelve-week study from May to July 2019 at twelve locations in Mayo and Galway to test the efficacy of the Mostela to detect the species. A second camera trap was placed outside to record any stoats that did not enter. The results of this study are outlined in the poster below.

This project set out to build new and permanent structures in County Limerick in the vicinity of the Mulkear River to function as suitable roosting sites for the lesser horseshoe bat. This is the first time that funding under an agri-environment scheme was solely targeted to benefit this bat species.