From the archives: Foxes bridged the Sound to invade Achill

Tom Gillespie shares an article from our archives about the arrival of foxes on Achill Island, which appeared to be quite the nuisance 120 years ago

A WRITER in the issue of The Connaught Telegraph of February 21, 1903, stated: “Foxes were so scarce in Achill before the bridge was built that the brush of one was hung up in the taproom of a public house on show as a rarity.

“Now they are so common on the island as to constitute a nuisance, no geese being safe at night unless under cover and securely fastened in; and even in the daytime they are known to approach the villages and steal geese as well as hens.

“Lambs on the mountains are attacked by them; hares, formerly most abundant, are reduced by their savages to nearly the vanishing point and the same remark applies to grouse, which once were thick in the purple heather covering Slievemore and the mighty Croaghaun.

“The stupendous precipices and inaccessible cliffs of Achill afford them unmolested breeding dens which, apparently, they soon discovered when the bridge was built.

“At night they regularly visit the sandy bays of the island, digging up and eating sand eels; and once this autumn, when encamped on Keem strand, we saw no less than three together.

"Every endeavour is being made to rid the island of the pest but, up to the present (1903), with little result.”