Mammals are particularly important for nature conservation, as they are generally charismatic flagship species whose welfare garners the support and sympathy of the general public. As umbrella species, with comparatively large home ranges, protecting enough habitat for their populations, will also protect adequate habitat for many other species (Hunter, 1995). Ireland is comparatively poor in terms of mammal diversity, as it became isolated from mainland Europe relatively soon after the ice retreated following the last period of glaciation. As a result few mammals were able to cross the land-bridges between mainland Europe, Britain and Ireland before the island of Ireland reformed. Of the 219 terrestrial mammals found in Europe (Temple & Terry, 2007), only 27 or 12.3% are native or long established in Ireland, compared with 43 species found on the island of Britain (NHM, 2009). Ireland has a long history of mammal recording, with an intense period of recording just prior to the publication of the An Foras Forbatha Atlases (Ní Lamhna, 1979; 1983). Subsequent mammal recording comes largely from single species surveillance or monitoring programmes that necessarily focus on species of conservation concern. Of particular note are several large scale studies of the badger (Smal, 1995; Feore, 1994), the otter (Chapman & Chapman, 1982; Lunnon &\r\nReynolds, 1991; Preston et al., 2004; Bailey & Rochford, 2006; Reid et al., 2013), the hare (Reid et al. 2009; McGowan et al., 2019) and the squirrels (Carey et al., 2007; Lawton et al., 2015). More recent collaborative works to map the ranges of several species have been published on bats (Roche et al., 2014) and mammals in general (Lysaght & Marnell, 2016).