Letter in Irish Independent July 22nd Hare-brained killing must stop The killing for 'sport' of a lion in Zimbabwe, believed to be the son of the famous Cecil the lion, should come as no surprise. Cecil's demise in 2015 at the hands of a wealthy big game hunter sparked an international outcry, and rightly so. Many endangered wildlife species are targeted by people whose idea of fun is to tease, torture, or cruelly kill magnificent creatures and then pose for pictures by the mangled, bleeding carcasses. Donald Trump Jr has shot elephants (a species endangered on two continents) and showed off their severed tails to photographers. But we Irish aren't exactly in a position to throws stones. We don't have elephants, lions, or rhinos in Ireland. But we do have hares and foxes, both of which are subjected to deliberate cruelty with the full backing of the State and our legal system. Each coursed hare is a little Hibernian Cecil who so-called sports people like to see terrorised and battered on our muddy, frosted, or rain-swept fields in winter. The hare is a timid creature that could never hope to roar like a lion, but whose death screech has been likened to that of the mythical banshee. Brave punters laugh and cheer as it is sent somersaulting into the chilly air like a sloither on its way over the bar at a hurling match. The hare, whose bones are broken and crushed by two turbo-charged dogs, is as much a victim of man's perennial inhumanity as any exotic animal in the jungles or the great plains of Asia or Africa. John Fitzgerald Callan, Co Kilkenny