Greens not consistent in stand on biodiversity

Dear Editor.

I see that the Greens in government are sticking to their guns in seeking a ban on the sale and distribution of turf from September, despite claims from the backwoods wing of Irish politics that the move will drive a stake through the heart of rural Ireland.

Their consistency on this issue is commendable. Our peat lands are ecological treasures beyond price, helping to prevent flooding by absorbing water and protecting human health by storing enormous amounts of deadly carbon dioxide.

Unfortunately the Greens are not being similarly brave or consistent on another ecological issue: the plight of our persecuted Irish Hare. This mammal is a sub-species of the Mountain Hare that is unique to Ireland. One of our few truly native species, it has been on this island since at least the last Ice Age of 10,000 years and for possibly around 60,000 years before that.

Despite its “protected” status an exemption allows coursing clubs to capture thousands of these animals each year so so-called sportspeople can set dogs on them. They are terrorized, and in some cases mauled or have their bones crushed as gamblers cheer on the participating greyhounds.

The Irish Hare is also under threat from loss of habitat resulting from urbanization and the downside of modern agriculture. Further pressure from

widespread netting, and disruption of habitats by gangs beating the ground around them with sticks, doesn’t help its conservation status.

A Bill to ban hare coursing will appear before the Dail in the coming months, and you’d expect that Green Party support for such a measure would be a given. After all it’s official party policy to seek a ban on the practice.

But because the party is in government with parties that condone hare coursing it looks set to vote against the Bill.

That would make history. It would be the first time a Green Party anywhere in the world had supported hare coursing.

Whatever about a turf cutting ban discommoding country dwellers, hare coursing should be uprooted completely from rural Ireland and banished forever from our countryside.

Opposition to it has been a core principle of the Irish Green Party. For the Greens to accord it parliamentary approval would be on a par with them voting in favour of Climate Change or the Hole in the Ozone Layer.

Who would have thought that coursing clubs would have greater political clout than turf cutters?

And a what a strange “green” environment we’d have: Where cutting turf was illegal but one of the world’s barbaric blood sports was allowed…and with the ringing endorsement of a party that for more than three decades was committed to its abolition.

Thanking you, John Fitzgerald, Lower Coyne Street, Callan, Co. Kilkenny.