There is to be open season on the protected red deer in Kerry, the country's last and oldest remaining native red deer herd, the National Parks and Wildlife Service has confirmed.
The decision to allow red deer who roam beyond the national park to be shot under licence this autumn has generated fears of a return to Edwardian-style hunting parties. These grand affairs all but wiped out the last remaining native herd in Kerry in the first half of the last century.
Their numbers had dwindled to under 70 before an intensive campaign by the specially formed Kerry Red Deer Society led to their protection.
No red deer count has taken place in Kerry in recent years, but the population is estimated at anything from 700 to 1,500.
The lifting of the 35-year-old ban comes after intensive lobbying by farmers and public representatives who claimed the deer were a hazard on public roads and a pest on forestry, golf courses and land.
But many conservationists saw the campaign as a thinly disguised attempt by some landowners and a powerful hunting lobby to tap into the growing craze for stag hunting.
Lifting the protection would lead to a proliferation of trophy hunters, said Noel Grimes, chairman of the Kerry Red Deer Society. The society had called for a proper national deer survey of species, gender, numbers and location. "We should be told how many deer are in the herd before they allow this hunting to take place outside the National Park, " he said yesterday.