Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss

Dear Editor,

As a campaigner for wildlife protection, I wish the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss well as it grapples with the multiple threats to Ireland’s flora and fauna. In particular, I hope that the plight of our persecuted Irish hare will feature in the Assembly’s deliberations.

This magnificent creature is one of our few truly native mammals, a survivor of the last Ice Age of 10,000 years ago that may have been around for 60,000 years or more before that. It is a sub-species of the mountain hare that is unique to Ireland.

Lauded in song and folklore, it has been in decline for the past half century, mainly due to habitat loss arising from urbanisation and the downside of modern agriculture. Mono-culture strips away swathes of its food resource and the cover it depends on to evade predators.

Given the obvious threats to its survival, I find it shocking and incomprehensible that the government still permits coursing clubs to capture thousands of hares each year for the purpose of setting dogs on them.

This mammal that conservationists have dubbed the “flagship of Irish biodiversity” is at the mercy of people who get their kicks from watching it run from hyped-up greyhounds. Some hares get mauled or tossed into the air like rag dolls, others die post-coursing of stress-related ailments.

Even the arrival in Ireland of the RHD2 virus that is fatal to hares and rabbits and can be spread by coursing activities, didn’t faze the politicians who back this barbarism. A temporary suspension on coursing was lifted following a ferocious backbench rebellion by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil TDs.

If the government really wishes to address our biodiversity crisis, should it not be concerned about the signal it’s sending out by allowing the very symbol of our wonderful wildlife heritage to be used as live bait in coursing?

This isn’t some harmless pastime like tennis or swimming, but a practice that is criminalized elsewhere in Europe, carrying hefty fines and prison terms. It has been banned in Northern Ireland since 2011.

I suggest that the Citizen’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss place the need for a coursing ban at the top of its agenda.

Thanking you, John Fitzgerald,

Lower Coyne Street, Callan, Co. Kilkenny.