Change of course needed - Village Magazine

PB February/March 2024 February/March 2024 69

9000 hares have been captured by 66 clubs

since 2021; of which 300 were pinned by the

greyhounds and 30 died

Hre pinned by greyhound: pic courtesy Irish Council Aginst Bloodsports

n the run up to the 98th national hare-

coursing meeting taking place in Clonmel,

Tipperary in early February, the sport which

is the hunting of hares with greyhounds

using sight rather than scent, is facing

renewed calls to be banned over animal welfare

concerns.

A bill introduced last year by Social Democrats

TD Jennifer Whitmore seeks to prohibit the

granting of coursing licences by the Minister for

Agriculture and to aord the hare full protection

under the Wildlife Act.

It’s also not the ﬁrst time the sport has faced

pressure, with Whitmore acknowledging the

work of former TDs Trevor Sargent and Maureen

O’Sullivan, as well as People Before Proﬁt TD Paul

Murphy’s bill attempting to ban hare-coursing

introduced in 2020. It was also a big

preoccupation of the late independent TD, Tony

Gregory.

Though the hare is a protected species in

Ireland owing to its importance environmentally

and culturally, the Minister for Agriculture is

permitted to award coursing licences to clubs

around the country to capture and subject hares

to coursing, something Whitmore finds

hypocritical.

As part of the regulations, clubs are required

to record data on the number of hares captured,

coursed, injured, killed and released, and to

submit those data to the National Parks and

Wildlife Service (NPWS).

Analysing the data reported to the NPWS over

the last three years, Village has found that almost

9000 hares have been captured by 66 clubs since

the 2021/22 coursing season. Some 400 of these

were captured and coursed as part of the Clonmel

national meeting in the past two seasons, with

data from this year not yet available.

Campaigners against coursing say that the

entire experience for the hare, from capture to

release can be traumatic. Before coursing events,

club ocials subject hares to training sessions

to familiarise them with the ﬁeld and to teach

them to run up the centre of it to enhance the

spectacle. Hares are ‘netted’ and kept together

in enclosures. This adds considerably to the

stress suered by the hares which are solitary

creatures in the wild, not living together in

groups.

Many point to the fact that Ireland is largely an

outlier when it comes to hare-coursing — being

one of just three countries worldwide where the

practice is legal. Others suggest the compromise

of replacing the live hares with a mechanical lure

on a pulley system, a practice that is common in

the UK and US, where live hare-coursing is illegal.

This narrative is countered by the Irish Coursing

Club – the national association for hare-coursing

in Ireland. It argues that “coursing is all about the

hare”, suggesting that the hare “will continue to

ﬂourish only with the assistance of coursing

clubs”, making the sport they manage

“indispensable and unique”.

Whitmore ﬁnds this thinking self-serving,

telling Village “a lot of hunting clubs would use

that as their line [of thinking]”, emphasizing the

trauma of capture and enclosure for days on end.

Though the muzzling of dogs has been

mandatory for many years, hares continue to be

killed. Over 300 hares have been ‘pinned’

according to coursing reports submitted to the

NPWS over the past three years. This is where

dogs successfully catch the hare and pin it to the

ground preventing it from getting free.

Aside from the inevitable stress and trauma

this causes, many hares suer injuries as part of

Change of course needed

Time to pass

legislation banning

cruel hare-coursing

By Conor O’Carroll

the practice. Over 30 hares have died during

coursing everts, according to the reports

examined by Village, with the vast majority dying

from the injuries sustained, or having to be

euthanised by the onsite vet.

In 2022, the Loughrea Coursing Club was

denied a licence after a report from the NPWS

found the club vet had left hares in boxes

alongside dead hares while another hare had

been euthanised due to the shock and trauma it

had sustained.

The club was nevertheless granted a licence for

the 2023/24 season after a one-year absence.

Other instances of poor practices include

unmuzzled dogs breaking into the track and

catching a hare in Cork, and a hare that was

“accidently” killed during release in Donegal.

The percentages of hares that are killed may

seem small compared to the number that are

caught, but Whitmore says this argument misses

the point and ignores the impact the levels of

stress endured by the hares has on the population

calling it “animal abuse”.

A Red C poll from 2019 suggests that a majority

of the public agree with Whitmore, with a huge

majority (77%) supporting a ban on hare-

coursing, while just 9% say they would oppose it.

“The majority of people don’t want it, don’t

participate in it and don’t agree with it”, says

Whitmore. She considers the government should

listen to the public and not the powerful

unrepresentative lobby groups.

Hre pinned by greyhound

Pic courtesy Irish Council Against Bloodsports

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