Sir, – Another hare-coursing season will soon begin. Politicians, as deaf to the pleas of campaigners as they’ve been to the cries of screaming hares, refuse to halt the cruelty of this “sport”.
We are in the run-up to a general election, so I hope that all who empathize with the hare’s sad plight will lobby their Dáil candidates on the issue.
There are two compelling reasons for banning this activity: firstly there is the open-and-shut case against it on animal welfare grounds.
Despite the muzzling of greyhounds, hares are mailed, battered and flung about like broken toys.
They can have their brittle bone crushed or die later in the wild of the abnormally high stress levels brought on by prolonged captivity and a contrived chase.
The second reason for a ban is equally valid: the Irish hare is one of our few truly native mammals, a subspecies of the mountain hare that is unique to Ireland, a survivor of the last Ice Age that has, alarmingly, been in decline for the past 50 years due to habitat loss.
Politicians have dodged addressing this clear-cut conservationist and animal cruelty issue. Isn’t it time they did what is right for our wildlife heritage, as distinct from what is politically expedient?
Our native hares deserve better than this hell on Earth that calls itself a “sport”. – Yours, etc,
JOHN FITZGERALD,
Callan,
Co Kilkenny.