Letter in Irish Times: May 20th
 
 
                                The survival of our native Irish hare
 
 What’s happening to our native Irish Hare? We know it has been in decline for the past fifty years, due to habitat loss arising from urbanization and the downside of modern agriculture.
 

But information provided last month in response to a Dail question revealed that less 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 Twenty years ago more than 10,000 hares were netted per annum for a typical coursing season. A decade ago the figure was around 5,000.

On April 18th 2023 Minister Darragh O Brien revealed that “The number of hares captured from the wild for the 2022-2023 coursing season was 3,398.”

Fewer hares being captured by coursing cubs 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 per day at a meeting. If club has failed to capture enough hares, it has to extend its fixture by a day or two so that 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 of 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% 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.

John Fitzgerald,

Callan,

Co. Kilkenny