Sir, – What’s happening to our native Irish hare? We know it has been in decline for the past 50 years, due to habitat loss arising from urbanisation and the downside of modern agriculture.
But information provided last month in response to a Dáil question revealed that fewer hares were captured for the most recent coursing season than for the previous one.
Coursing clubs appear under increasing pressure to capture adequate numbers of hares for their fixtures. Up to 20 years ago more than 10,000 hares were netted per annum for a typical coursing season. A decade ago the figure was about 5,000.
On April 18t,h Darragh O’Brien [Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage] revealed that “the number of hares captured from the wild for the 2022-2023 coursing season was 3,398.”
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Fewer hares being captured by coursing clubs might sound like good news for the species. Unfortunately, it means that each captured hare has to run more times from dogs. Under coursing club rules, a hare may be coursed once a day at a meeting. If a club has failed to capture enough hares, it has to extend its fixture by a day or two so the hares can be re-coursed.
This imposes further pressure on each hare used, increasing the risk of injury on the field or death afterwards from stress-related ailments. It results in the hares being subjected to a form of Russian roulette: they might escape unscathed or they might get mauled or have their bones crushed.
Whatever the cause of the decline in hare numbers, the Government should not be allowing the scandal of live coursing to continue while this iconic species is under threat.
The Irish hare has been around since before the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, and possibly for eons before that. It scampered freely across our untamed pre-climate change island at a time when humans dressed in loin cloths and politicians weren’t even heard of.
More than a fifth of all the submissions received by the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss called for a ban on hare coursing, and the most recent Red C poll found that 78 per cent of people favoured its abolition.
Coursing has no purpose or rationale beyond catering for gamblers and those who enjoy watching an animal suffer. The Government should stop gambling with the future – the very survival – of our native hares.
It’s time to call off the dogs. – Yours, etc,
JOHN FITZGERALD,
Callan,
Co Kilkenny.
