Mink which have escaped from a mink farm in Co Waterford are causing havoc in the Ring/Helvic area. It is not known how many of the animals escaped from a mink farm in Shanbally, Ring, Dungarvan, but the number is thought to have been sizeable.
It is also thought that the release of the mink may have been malicious, as a perimeter fence had been vandalised.
However, there has been no admission to date from any of the animal rights group in Ireland. Some weeks ago a British animal rights group released hundreds of mink from a farm into the wild, causing chaos.
The matter is being investigated by the Department of Agriculture, which received a complaint from the Waterford Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Its staff had been processing complaints from local people about attacks by the mink on poultry and contacted the Department, which licenses mink farms in the Republic.
An inspection was carried out by Department staff, who discovered that at one farm mink had managed to burrow their way out of the compound.
But the inspectors also discovered a hole in a perimeter fence which had been punched through from the outside, and it is from this hole that most of the mink have escaped. Department officials are concerned about the escape of the mink because of the number of poultry units in the area and because mink will attack fowl, especially in the autumn.
Since the escape was reported, seven attacks by the mink have been investigated in the Ring/Helvic area. Mink, introduced into Ireland in 1951, can cause severe damage to wildlife because they are multidimensional killers, with the capacity to kill a songbird in a tree or a trout in the bottom of a stream.
Mink are dangerous to humans only when cornered but the animals, especially farmed mink, have no fear of humans and will approach people if their paths cross.