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Wildlife unit needed
Letter to the Editor, Mail on Sunday: Feb. 25th 2024
 
Colm McGuirk's article on the multiple threats to our wonderful wildlife heritage made for grim reading. (Irish Mail on Sunday February 18th). But it isn't just poorly implemented environmental measures that threaten the future of all those Irish species, endangered or otherwise.

There can be no excuse for the government backtracking on commitments to set up a fully-funded, trained, and adequately staffed Wildlife Crime Unit to crack down on those who wreak havoc on our ostensibly protected wild species and habitats. 

Aside from those well-publicized incidents of people shooting or poisoning rare birds, or ones that the National Parks and Wildlife Service is attempting to reintroduce, there’s a daily all-out attack on a whole range of birds and animals that, on paper, are shielded from harm.

Badgers are taken by gambling gangs to pits where dogs are set on then, resulting in prolonged pain and suffering followed by death.

Other “sportsmen” roam the countryside with lurchers or assorted mongrel breeds and place bets on how many hares they can kill.

Though deer-hunting with hounds was banned in 2010, packs can still be seen in some areas, with masked men on horseback riding behind them.

The legality of hare coursing and fox hunting also doesn’t help efforts to tackle wildlife crime. It signals that the political establishment sees nothing wrong with terrorising and killing wildlife for fun, and this right in the middle of a biodiversity crisis!

The establishment of a body dedicated to tackling this attack on our precious native fauna, and the ravaging of habitats that are among the most poorly preserved in Europe, would represent an enormous step forward for Irish wildlife conservation.

John Fitzgerald,
Callan, Co. Kilkenny

ACTION ALERT

Plans for a new wildlife crime unit were announced in October 2020, with Minister Malcolm Noonan saying at the time that “it is proposed to establish this dedicated unit during 2021” and that it would “ensure a strategic and standardised approach to dealing with illegal persecution of wildlife”.  https://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2020-12-15a.656

Heritage Minister Darragh O’Brien added that the unit would “put a greater focus on the issue of wildlife crime, including the illegal hunting of hares.” However, there was a subsequent U-turn, with plans for the wildlife crime unit scrapped. 

Call on Heritage Minister Darragh O'Brien and Minister of State for Nature Malcolm Noonan to urgently establish a wildlife crime unit.

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

Malcolm Noonan TD (Green Party, Carlow Kilkenny)
Minister of State for Nature
Tel: (01) 618 3148 OR (01) 618 3156
Email: mos@housing.gov.ie; malcolm.noonan@oireachtas.ie
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/votemalcolmnoonan1/
X: https://twitter.com/noonan_malcolm

If you have information on wildlife crimes, please contact the Gardai – the Garda Confidential phone number is 1800 666 111. Contact details for local Garda stations can be found at https://www.garda.ie/en/Contact-Us/Station-Directory

Contact the NPWS at Tel: 01 888 2000 / Email: natureconservation@npws.gov.ie