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There are renewed calls on Heritage Minister Darragh O'Brien to reject a licence application from the Irish Coursing Club for a 2023/24 hare capture licence.

The licence would allow the cruel coursers to catch thousands of hares from the wild, hold them in captivity for weeks or months and force them to run for their lives in front of greyhounds.

A hare netting licence would force hares to endure another season of coursing cruelty, starting with the awful ordeal of being ripped from their natural habitats. They are frightened out into the open and as they try to get away from the threat, they run into long nets set by coursers. They become entangled in them and desperately struggle to get free but there is no escape. The coursers close in and grab them. It is very stressful for these timid animals and can also cause physical injuries. 

More details about netting was provided in the recently published “Survival, movements, home ranges and dispersal of hares after coursing and/or translocation” - a study commissioned by the National Parks and Wildlife Service which has shamefully issued past netting licences::

"Up to 6,000 hares are captured from the wild each year under government licence by long netting. Nets 1.5 metres tall and sometimes tens of metres long are hung from forked sticks to create a pouch at ground level. These are placed across likely exit routes from an area to be walked over by a line of beaters such that hares flushed from their daily forms run into the net. Target areas include unimproved rough pasture with substantial cover of rushes, Juncus species, in which hares shelter during daylight hours."

Speaking on Today FM on 1 June 2023, environmental journalist John Gibbons highlighted how the netting process negatively affects hares.

“Every year, about 6,000 hares are captured – they’re captured by guys going out setting netting traps and banging and screaming at them,” he told presenter Matt Cooper. “These are wild animals. They have no contact whatsoever with humans so the very act of being captured is enormously traumatising for them.” 

“Most people in Ireland, including in rural Ireland, absolutely reject the idea of capturing and torturing and tormenting wild animals,” he went on to say. Listen to the full report at https://youtu.be/T0LP64RoUSM

Previously, in a 2013 report on RTE Radio 1, reporter Brian O'Connell noted that the piercing sound of a hare caught in a coursing net “sounded to me like a child crying".

Watching a courser handling a captured hare, he said: “You have one hand underneath his stomach and you've got the other hand catching him by the ear.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jPPME1OXuo

Later in the report, there was an acknowledgement that hares can get injured in nets, with a courser saying you have to get them out quickly to avoid injury.

The act of netting hares not only poses a threat to individual hares but to entire populations.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service division of the Department of Heritage has made it clear that “the catching of hares in nets, their transportation in boxes and the collection and holding of hares in confined areas can all be considered to increase the risk of disease spread”.

In relation to the highly contagious RHD2 virus, the NPWS has stated that “if one infected animal is found in netting for a coursing meeting then the entire capture would need to be put down.” 

Past Heritage Minister Josepha Madigan warned that RHD2 has “the potential to wipe out the hare population completely”. Responding to a Dail Question, she stressed that “netting and collecting hares for coursing meetings has been identified as a SIGNIFICANT RISK FACTOR in spreading the [RHD2] disease”.

Speaking on RTE’s Morning Ireland in September 2019, Dr Ferdia Marnell, Head of Animal Ecology at the National Parks and Wildlife Service said that the disease is “very resilient and very easily transferable” and that it “can be passed on soil, on nets and boxes [used by coursers to hold and transport hares] and on shoes and clothing”.

A statement from the Heritage Department described the horrific consequences of the disease for affected animals – “It causes death within a few days of infection with sick animals having swollen eyelids, partial paralysis and bleeding from the eyes and mouth. Most distressingly, in the latter states close to death, animals exhibit unusual behaviour emerging from cover into the open and convulsing or fitting before dying.”

Due to the cruelty of coursing and the serious disease spread risks posed by the activity, it is imperative that Minister Darragh O'Brien acts in the best interests of the Irish Hare and refuses a 2023-24 coursing licence.

URGENT ACTION ALERT

HELP THE HARES: Contact Heritage Minister Darragh O’Brien and Minister of State Malcolm Noonan. Email "Please refuse 2023-24 licences for cruel hare coursing" to: minister@housing.gov.ie; mos@housing.gov.ie

Minister Darragh O’Brien (Fianna Fail, Dublin Fingal)
Tel: (01) 618 3802 OR (086) 251 9893
Email: minister@housing.gov.ie; darragh.obrien@oireachtas.ie
Leave a message on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DarraghOBrienTD
Tweet to Minister O'Brien: http://twitter.com/DarraghOBrienTD

Malcolm Noonan TD (Green Party, Carlow Kilkenny)
Minister of State for Heritage
Tel: (01) 618 3148 OR (01) 618 3156
Email: mos@housing.gov.ie; malcolm.noonan@oireachtas.ie; pippa.hackett@oireachtas.ie
(CC: Green Party Senator Pippa Hackett, Minister of State for Land Use and Biodiversity in the Department of Agriculture)
Leave a message on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/votemalcolmnoonan1/
Tweet to Minister of State Noonan: https://twitter.com/noonan_malcolm

Contact all your local TDs and urge them to pledge support for Jennifer Whitmore TD's "Protection of Hares Bill 2023". Visit the Oireachtas website for contact details for TDs https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/members/tds/?term=/ie/oireachtas/house/dail/33

A RED C poll has found that 77% of people in both rural and urban areas want coursing banned, with just 9% disagreeing with a ban. Urge Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tanaiste Micheál Martin to respect the wishes of the majority and ban hare coursing and all bloodsports.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar
Telephone: +353 (0)1-640 3133
Email: leo.varadkar@oireachtas.ie; finegael@finegael.ie
Tweet to: http://www.twitter.com/@LeoVaradkar
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeoVaradkar

Tanaiste Micheál Martin
Email: micheal.martin@oireachtas.ie; info@fiannafail.ie
Phone: +353 (0)1–618 4350 or +353 (0)21-432 0088
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michealmartintd/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/@MichealMartinTD

Please sign and share the petition

Sinn Fein: Support a ban on cruel hare coursing
https://www.change.org/p/sinn-fein-support-a-ban-on-cruel-hare-coursing

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https://www.paypal.me/banbloodsports

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Witness the cruelty of hare coursing in Ireland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gkr014Y0KR0

SEE ALSO:

Jennifer Whitmore TD introduces Protection of Hares Bill 2023
https://banbloodsports.wordpress.com/2023/05/26/jennifer-whitmore-td-introduces-protection-of-hares-bill-2023/