No place to hide

IT’S bad enough that coursing clubs are out snatching hares from fields, hills and mountainsides for the upcoming season, but can they not leave these animals in peace on our inland and off-shore islands?

In recent years the coursers have targeted Hog Island, off the Co. Clare coast, Whiddy Island, in Bantry Bay, Island Eddy in Galway Bay, and Oyster Island, off the Sligo coast, among other idyllic venues, the main reason for these incursions being that hares have become so scarce in many parts of Ireland.

Bull Island in Dublin Bay has not been visited by coursing clubs for the past three years. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are no hares left on Bull Island. There were just two remaining in 2016, as confirmed by a visiting conservationist. A combination of netting for coursing and illegal poaching decimated the hare population.

The Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan, has repeatedly stated in response to Dáil questions that she cares deeply about the welfare and conservation status of the Irish hare. How, then, can she allow this creature, supposedly a protected species, to be taken from the few locations where it can run free, untroubled by predators?

For the sad reality is that the Irish hare is not safe in any part of Ireland. Having survived the last Ice Age of 10,000 years ago, it must now contend with recreational human cruelty and the political cowardice that allows coursing to continue.

I suspect we’ll only appreciate this animal when it has disappeared, or is pushed to the brink of extinction like the curlew. John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co. Kilkenny.