I hate to belittle anyone or a whole organisation but the npws are in my opinion absolutely terrible in what there remit is and I can say that from experience as I've been dealing with them for over 3 years.

I've read listed birds on site and foolishly decided npws would be the place to get expert advice and help.Wrong, their help was to stay out of field and put up fence and they'd give me a few Bob.So if I signed up I'd be kept off the land from march till end of August and I could if I want do predator control as they wouldn't so if I didn't birds would be gone.

They also employ some very good people on short summer contracts and then wonder why these people aren't around the following year,like they think people will survive on a short contract for 12 months.

In my case they would not listen to my ideas and everything they wanted me to do was taken straight from a research paper I found online from rspb in Britain which was based in a sanctuary and beared no resemblance to my land or geography.

They are an organisation with a good idea but has some terrible leaders with really old fashioned ideas.Look at curlew as the major example,they refuse to boost the bird's numbers by taking first clutch of eggs and rear them artificially and then release them for some strange reason.They will oversee the extinction of this bird in Ireland probably in less than a decade, crazy.

Your not wrong - look at the wretched state of our Natural Parks, destroyed with invasive species and badly overgrazed. As they say "a fish rots from its head" and in this case its no accident that the NPWS has been hollowed out by successive governments over the last 20 years to suit vested interests. Having said all that there I have been lucky to work with some outstanding individuals like Kieran Buckley of Boora fame etc. but its probably no accident that you never see decent skins like that getting into senior policy roles which continue to be stuffed with useless disinterested yes men