To my knowledge Roe have spread across Wales and in recent years have reached the coast of Cardigan Bay.
Although numbers are low the expanding population seems to be increasing against the odds. Reports of sightings becoming
more frequent, and if you know what you are looking for the signs are there.
On watching recent threads on the how genetics, diet etc effect antler quality and body weight along with a gold medal buck being shot in Carmarthenshire , got me thinking.
Where have these deer spread from and therefore what genetic pool do they originate from?
I have my own thoughts but would be interested to hear other people’s hypothesis.
This is a very interesting question and similar questions can be asked about many roe populations across the UK. If we go back just 60 odd years and look at G Kenneth Whitehead’s magnum opus “The Deer of Great Britain and Ireland “ you would probably be surprised at how small the then roe population was and how limited the distribution was. There was a population in East Anglia, centred on Thetford Chase, that apparently originated from Germany and was probably the only introduction of “new” blood to this country. It wasn’t particularly successful as the heads were generally poor.
Apart from these the English population south of the M4 was pretty much limited to the counties of Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey and Berkshire. These were not a continuous population and some were isolated from others. The other English roe were in Northumbria, Durham and the Lakes. The furthest south were in the very north of Lancashire in the Furness area. So in the early 1960s no roe were present in the vast majority of England and Wales.
Over the next four decades there was a dramatic expansion almost on the same scale as muntjac. This might have been by a natural expansion or it might have been the result of deliberate introduction, I suspect a bit of both. This view is enhanced by the fact that populations were popping up in new areas that were not adjacent to existing populations. By 2000 the BDS maps showed that the population in the NE had pushed down into Yorkshire and was starting to meet up with the East Anglian population pushing north. The Wiltshire population was pushing up over the M4 into the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire but Wales and England in a diagonal from the Wirral to Kent was essentially still free of roe but by 2023 the vast majority of this area had roe present as did the majority of Wales, the exceptions being the industrial valleys of South Wales and the Lleyn Peninsula and Snowdonia.
There were a few 10km squares on the border around Ludlow in which roe were recorded,by 2000, my guess is deliberately released, and also in odd locations across mid Wales as far west as Aberystwyth. By 2007 this had grown into a reasonable area that pushed well into Wales with odd records as far SW as Pembroke and as far NW as Bangor. Some of these were undoubtedly false and were probably fallow but where genuine some of the densities were quite low. I know that in 1990 a keeper in Denbighshire was trying to obtain some roe to release on the estate.
I’m pretty sure that the roe in the Ludlow area were a deliberate release and that Welsh roe were either from expansion of this population or further releases and therefore impossible to identify the genetic origin unless the person responsible confesses. I grew up in Monmouth and spent a lot of time in the local woods and fields and, apart from the odd muntjac reported as early as the 70s, the only deer present were fallow. The nearest roe that I know of was a roadkill roe doe that I saw near Leominster in 1997 and another on the eastern edge of the Forest of Dean in 1983, Richard Prior had a report of one in the same area about the same time.
I suspect that the Monmouthshire and Herefordshire roe came from the Wiltshire population pushing up via the Cotswolds and the Ludlow releases moving south. What makes me think that they might in part originate from Wiltshire roe is that Monmouthshire has already produced a few medals, including a very elegant gold from SE Monmouthshire, the mid Wales population doesn’t seem to be of the same quality.
The Carmarthen roe are also probably also originating from the Ludlow population pushing down and maybe the Monmouthshire deer pushing down the M4 corridor but it’s just as likely that Ivor Williams lent a hand. So identifying the genetic origin might prove impossible.
