[14] Consultants working for the Corrib gas project have carried out extensive surveys of wildlife flora and fauna in Kilcommon Parish, Erris between 2002 and 2009.

The first people who came to Ireland – mainly to coastal areas as the interior was heavily forested – arrived during the Middle Stone Age, as far back as eleven thousand years ago.

[16] Artefacts of hunter/gatherers are sometimes found in middens, rubbish pits around hearths where people would have rested and cooked over large open fires.

People began to farm the land, domesticate animals for food and milk, and settle in one place for longer periods.

These people had skills such as making pottery, building houses from wood, weaving, and knapping (stone tool working).

The Iron Age was a time of tribal warfare and kingships, each fighting neighbouring kings, vying for control of territories and taking slaves.

The Iron Age is the time period in which the mythological tales of the Ulster Cycle and sagas took place, as well as that of the Táin Bó Flidhais, whose narrative is set in mainly in Erris.

Some of the larger ecclesiastical settlements erected round towers to prevent their precious items from being plundered and also to show their status and strength against these pagan raiders from the north.

They were frequently at war with their cousins, Clanricarde of Galway, and in alliance with or against various factions of the O'Conor's of Siol Muiredaig and O'Kelly's of Uí Maine.

Mendicant orders—Augustinians, Carmelites, Dominicans and Franciscans began new settlements across Ireland and built large churches, many under the patronage of prominent Gaelic families.

When Elizabeth I came to the throne in the mid-16th century, the English people, as was customary at that time, followed the religious practices of the reigning monarch and became Protestant.

Many would be killed or forced to flee because of the 1641 Rebellion, during which a number of massacres were committed by the Catholic Gaelic Irish, most notably at Shrule in 1642.

A third of the overall population was reported to have perished due to warfare, famine and plague between 1641 and 1653, with several areas remaining disturbed and frequented by Reparees into the 1670s.

Some, like William Brown (1777–1857), left Foxford with his family at the age of nine and thirty years later was an admiral in the fledgeling Argentine Navy.

[27] The general unrest in Ireland was felt just as keenly across Mayo, and as the 19th century approached and news reached Ireland about the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, the downtrodden Irish, constantly suppressed by Government policies and decisions from Dublin and London, began to rally themselves for their own stand against British rule in their country.

1798 saw Mayo become a central part of the United Irishmen Rebellion when General Humbert from France landed in Killala with over 1,000 soldiers playing to support the main uprising.

Disaster struck in August 1845, when a killer fungus (later diagnosed as Phytophthora infestans) started to destroy the potato crop.

[31] A national movement was initiated in County Mayo during 1879 by Michael Davitt, James Daly, and others, which brought about a major social change in Ireland.

Michael Davitt, a labourer whose family had moved to England joined forces with Charles Stewart Parnell to win back the land for the people from the landlords and stop evictions for non-payment of rents.

When Charles Steward Parnell made a speech in Ennis, County Clare, urging nonviolent resistance against landlords, his tactics were enthusiastically taken in Mayo against Boycott.

PJ Ruttledge and Thomas Derrig would become founding members of the party and served in Éamon de Valera's first-ever Fianna Fáil government as ministers.

In 1990 Mary Robinson, from County Mayo, became the first-ever female President of Ireland, and is widely credited with revitalising the position with importance and focus it had never possessed before.

[37] In the early historic period, what is now County Mayo consisted of a number of large kingdoms, minor lordships and tribes of obscure origins.

The council is responsible for housing and community, roads and transportation, urban planning and development, amenity and culture, and environment.

[39] The electoral divisions of Cong, Dalgan, Houndswood, Kilmaine, Neale, Shrule, in the former Rural District of Ballinrobe, are in Galway West.

With so many of Mayo's electorate being small farmers, the county became a base for the emergence of Clann na Talmhan, an agrarian party in the 1940s and 1950s.

Towards the start of the 21st century, the balance of power in Mayo began to shift towards Fine Gael, thanks in part to the emergence of Enda Kenny and Michael Ring.

Kenny, who became Taoiseach in 2011, led Fine Gael to a historic victory in the 2011 Irish general election which included securing four out of five available seats for his party in Mayo.

Serving alongside Rabbitte was Emmet Stagg, one of the longest-standing Labour TDs of the modern era, himself from Hollymount not far from Claremorris.

The Mayo Energy Audit 2009–2020 is an investigation into the implications of peak oil and subsequent fossil fuel depletion for a rural county in west of Ireland.