The hunt, the heart and the hare of the dog

Another Life: 'The peculiar bevels and bulges which sculpt the head of a hare sweep up to support the twin, twitching columns of its ears.

Only at close proximity do you enter the force-field of the animal's ceaseless, neurotic anxiety, the constant radar scan of its fear. Its ears are never still, but swivel their dark tips in infinitesimal and separate adjustments, catching sound like a sail catches wind, every sigh and rustle in that untrustworthy vector of the world directly to the rear. And next to sound, scent. The split in the upper lip is moist, like a dog's nose, the better to sample data delivered in hints, in airborne parts per million . . ."

Such intimate notes on the fearfulness of Lepus timidus hibernicus, the Irish hare, came from magical minutes of watching one closely through my window. They help put fur and muscle, so to speak, on a veterinary syndrome with a name new to me. "Peracute capture myopathy" is the term for a hare dying almost at once from the stress of being netted and bundled into a bag for greyhound coursing. In acute, sub-acute and chronic myopathy, such stress-related death is postponed for hours, days - even months - to a final heart attack.

According to the Irish Council Against Blood Sports, using documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, a vet reported to the National Parks and Wildlife Service last January on post-mortems in Kilkenny on 40 hares that died after a coursing meeting at New Ross Co Wexford. They had died from a variety of syndromes, but, the vet explained, "under the influence of stress the hare's immune system is compromised and these organisms suddenly multiply rapidly to cause a severe clinical disease and ultimately death."

In December, the Green Party TD, Trevor Sargent, asked the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, to consider myopathy and end the licensing of netting of hares for coursing. The minister said there was "no evidence that hare coursing in Ireland adversely impacts on the conservation of hare populations". So at coursing meets, local conservation rangers of the NPWS continue to be burdened with supervising the capture and release of hares (a job most of them detest) and the animals' welfare.

North of the Border, Minister Roche's counterpart sees things rather differently. Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Angela Smith has listed the Co Wexford casualties and their demonstration of mortal stress among her reasons for extending her temporary ban on live-hare capture, instituted in December, 2003. As a minister without local constituents, and a former employee of the League Against Cruel Sports, she is a sitting hare for her critics (among them Ian Paisley Jr). But she insists to the Countryside Alliance and the coursing clubs that her "strong feelings on cruelty to animals" come second to concern for the apparent decline in the hare population.

In 2002, a survey estimated a density of hares at less than one per square kilometre, with threats of local extinction. A repeat survey in 2004, using spotlights at night, found almost six hares per square kilometre. Researchers suggested this dramatic recovery might have resulted from two wet springs in which silage harvesting (which disturbs nursing hares and minces up new-born leverets) was delayed.

Later this month, an "all-Ireland action plan" on hare conservation will appear on the websites both of the NPWS and the North's Environment and Heritage Service, with an invitation to public consultation. The first national survey of hares will be a priority in the Republic, along with measures to conserve and improve the animal's habitats. Loss of habitat, through intensive agriculture, building development and human disturbance is certainly the major cause of the hare's decline. Indeed, coursing clubs argue that they help protect corners of the countryside most supportive of hares.

The all-Ireland plan itself will make no reference to coursing. But any interference with the Irish hare may finally come to be ruled out through the work of geneticist Dr Paulo Prodohl at Quercus, the North's biodiversity and conservation research centre based in Queen's University. His research into the genetic base of the Irish hare seems to be strengthening the case for regarding the Irish hare as a distinct, endemic species and not just a local subspecies of the mountain hare. As such, the EU may push for its total protection.

Meanwhile, with public opinion heavily against coursing, the Irish Council Against Bloodsports has renewed its plea to John O'Donoghue, the minister responsible for greyhounds and coursing, to replace live hare coursing with the use of mechanical lures ("drag" coursing). This is practised successfully in Australia, America and in Britain, where a hare coursing ban comes into effect later this month.