On remote Tory Island off the north coast of Donegal lives a small brown cow with unusually pointy horns. This special creature has no name but may well become a national icon.
This is the Tory Island cow, one of a breed of cattle believed to be specific to Tory. What makes her russet form and quiet temperament unique is that she holds the rather sad, heavily-weighted honour of being the last in her ancestral line. The Tory Island cow is on the very cusp of extinction and its last chance of survival rests in this calm beast.
The plight of the Tory shorthorn first came to the attention of conservationists during the summer of 1997 when farmer Eamonn Divers, the cow's owner, spoke of her existence to members of the Irish Seal Sanctuary, who were releasing a group of seals they had rescued from starvation off the coast of Tory earlier in the year. The Seal Sanctuary, though itself short of funds, donated £600 for her continued up-keep to Eamonn Divers, whose belief in his cow's value - in terms of both genetic resources and links to the heritage of Tory - have made him determined to try to keep the last shorthorn on the island.
Divers explains that there were three families who traditionally kept Tory Island cattle, passing them down from generation to generation. Some of the older members of the community remember when the island was home to at least 50 of these small brown cows, the first cattle breed to be brought ashore hundreds of years ago. Their initial place of origin is a mystery but more relevant to the species' evolutionary development is its long history on the island itself. The last Tory cow has evolutionary and genetic characteristics which are a specific result of her ancestral past on Tory Island.
According to Damian Nolan, environmental scientist and Irish Seal Sanctuary director, traits specific to the Tory cow include an ability to live on only half the pasture space required for modern breeds like the Fresian. As with other small breeds, Tory cows have staggered breeding, which allows for milk throughout the year. "They're ideally suited to small fields and island living and you wouldn't have to import milk from the mainland," says Nolan, who believes that the restoration of Tory cattle on the island would benefit its economy as well as ecology, making it more self-sufficient and sustainable.
"If this breed could be re-established on the island," speculates Nolan, "there'd be a great potential for Tory Island beef, which is a naturally salty beef, since the cow lives on a small island surrounded by sea and so absorbs more salt. It's also guaranteed BSE-free and organic, so producers these days could get a huge premium on it." Eamonn Divers, gives another economic factor, migration to the mainland, as the main reason for the plummet in the Tory cow's numbers, as families who traditionally bred the cattle sold up and left, leaving the island without a bull.
The case of the Tory cow is an example of how the various species in a locality, including humans, depend on each other in the web of life. "Initially it sounds farfetched," says Damian Nolan, "but there's a relationship between this cow and the corncrake, a rare, protected species of bird. There used to be a herd of 50 cows on the island but now it's not being grazed. This means that big weeds like hog-weed are coming in and corncrakes don't like tall weeds and scrub: they need grassland. So if the island is not being grazed, the corncrake will not find it suitable as a habitat and it will also become extinct." Obviously the Tory cow, which eats half as much grass as the bigger breeds and so doesn't overstretch the island's limited resources, is the corncrake's ideal ecological partner.
The Tory cow is just one of many native livestock breeds threatened with extinction. Other species dangerously low in breeding numbers include the Irish moilid cow and the Irish draft horse, while the Ulster large white pig, the Irish greyhound pig and the Roscommon and Claddagh sheep breeds have already slipped into oblivion. A heightened awareness of the accelerating disappearance of native livestock has precipitated positive action in relation to breeds like the Galway sheep and Dexter and Kerry cattle, whose very low numbers are slowly climbing again. The Kerry bog pony is one of the best examples of a species successfully brought back from the very brink of extinction: in 1987 only three were known to exist but by 1995 22 had been discovered and the breed was re-establishing itself.
Eamonn Divers feels that it will be a great pity if the Tory cow became extinct. "I suppose it'd be hard to put it right now but it would be nice if they were back on the island," he says. His cow had two daughters several years ago but these were sold to the mainland and the bull who fathered them can't be located. The cow is seven years old and there is a risk that she may become barren if she does not calve soon. As the need for a bull gets more and more urgent, what concrete steps are being taken to preserve the Tory Island breed on the island?
Nolan explains: "We're networking around the country to search for more members of the breed and trying to get it genetically typed with a blood sample taken and the genes mapped to see whether on European-wide databases there are similar cattle." The Irish Seal Sanctuary has also enlisted the help of the Irish Genetics Resources and Conservation Trust, set up several years ago in response to the fast decline in Ireland of genetic diversity, now widely recognised as a major problem throughout the world.
If a Tory bull cannot be found, the next best thing will be to get the cow in calf by a shorthorn with similar genetic make-up, in order to save as much of the Tory Island cow's genetic characteristics as possible. If the breed is to survive, however, it will have to be re-established on Tory Island itself for the Tory Island cow has been shaped by that island's unique environment.
