The deadly RHD2 virus which threatens the future of the unique Irish Hare species can be spread on the nets and boxes used by cruel coursing clubs to trap hares, it has been confirmed.
Speaking on RTE’s Morning Ireland (September 25th, 2019), Dr Ferdia Marnell, Head of Animal Ecology at the National Parks and Wildlife Service said that the highly infectious disease which the NPWS has warned could prove “catastrophic” for hares, “can be passed on soil, on nets and boxes and on shoes and clothing”.
“It’s a haemorrhagic disease which means that the animals die from internal bleeding,” he told listeners. “It is very resilient and very easily transferable”.
It has already been identified in Cork, Clare, Leitrim, Offaly, Wicklow and Wexford.
Dr Marnell explained that symptoms are very variable and that animals who succumb to the disease “die very quickly” and “seem to keel over and die very suddenly out in the open”. He said that the NPWS is “still trying to get a grip on how widespread it is and the impact it is going to have”.
“Unusually with this version of the disease - some animals survive and that, in some way, gives us more concerns because then you may have animals carrying the disease that don’t apparently have any symptoms,” he stated. “And that is one of the reasons, I suppose, that we have taken the step of not issuing the coursing licence this year because the risk associated with bringing hares together from various areas and keeping them in a park was considered to be too high a risk to take particularly given that some of those animals could actually be carrying the disease unawares to the coursers.”
He appealled to member of the public who “see instance of mass mortality in rabbits or individual hares - apparently uninjured but lying dead in fields” to contact the National Parks and Wildlife Service - Email nature.conservation@chg.gov.ie or Phone 1890 383 000.
URGENT ACTION ALERT
It is imperative that Minister Madigan and her department does everything possible to save the wildlife from a disease the National Parks and Wildlife Service warns could prove “catastrophic” for the Irish Hare. They must immediately announce a total and permanent ban on hare coursing and all forms of hare hunting, including beagling, harrying and shooting. Given that the disease is highly infectious and can be “easily spread” - including in the faeces and urine of infected animals as well as on human clothing - a ban on foxhunting (which involves hunters on foot and horseback terrorising foxes across multiple farmlands and large areas of countryside) must also be announced.
Contact Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister Josepha Madigan and urge them to announce a total and permanent end to hare coursing, hare hunting and foxhunting.
Email "Permanently end cruel hare coursing, hare hunting and fox hunting NOW" to josepha.madigan@oireachtas.ie; leo.varadkar@oireachtas.ie; finegael@finegael.ie
An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar
Government Buildings,
Upper Merrion St, Dublin 2
Telephone: +353 (0)1-6194020
Email: taoiseach@taoiseach.gov.ie; leo.varadkar@oireachtas.ie; finegael@finegael.ie
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Josepha Madigan
Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht
Phone: +353 (0)1 631 3800
Email: josepha.madigan@oireachtas.ie
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Tweet to: @josephamadigan
Fine Gael
51 Upper Mount Street
Dublin 2
Tel: 01 619 8444
Email: finegael@finegael.ie
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Ireland - Ban cruel hare coursing
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https://www.change.org/p/prime-minister-of-ireland-save-ireland-s-hares-from-extinction