Wild Ireland: Past, Present, Future

Install image of the Wild Ireland exhibition at the Ulster Museum
Date
Now to 31st August 2025
Time
10:00 to 17:00 (Closed Mondays)

Over the past half billion years, countless species of animals and plants have lived on the patch of the Earth’s surface we now call Ireland.

Renowned wildlife painter, Julian Friers, has collaborated with Ulster Museum Natural Sciences curator, Dr Mike Simms, to create over 50 remarkable paintings of our flora and fauna, past and present.

Most of the animals you will see in the exhibition have vanished - victims of natural catastrophes, environmental or evolutionary change. Others have departed our shores, but live on elsewhere on the planet.

Thousands of species survive in Ireland today. Many are struggling to adapt to changing environments and climate and face extinction here.

Join us to explore departed and vanished wildlife - and what can be done to help the survivors hold on.

This exhibition is open Tuesday to Sunday (closed Mondays) from 10:00 to 17:00 and no booking needed!

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In this short film, Dawn Patterson re-tells the beautiful and poignant story of the murmurations disappearance, and return.

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Where Did All The Starlings Go?

This was the question Lagan rower Dawn Patterson brought to one of Wild Belfast’s first meetings. Conor McKinney, founder and chair of Wild Belfast, tells the story from his perspective.

A illustration of an imagined dinosaur scene, with dinosaurs in a lake and on the lake edge.

The Prehistoric World of Neave Parker

Neave Parker was an artist who made reconstructing the likenesses of dinosaurs and other extinct animals his speciality.

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