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More than 1,200 hares, which had been in captivity for future race meetings, have been returned to the wild, announced the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
Clubs affiliated with the Irish Coursing Club had previously caught 1,270 hares for course activities. However, the activity has been suspended under Covid-19 Level 5 restrictions and the hares have remained in captivity ever since.
A statement from the Department said it formally requested the clubs to release all captive hares because of the importance of “welfare and conservation of a protected species.”
The Department noted that as of December 1, the current duration of the Level 5 restrictions, the hares would have been in captivity for at least six weeks and, in some cases, much longer.
It is also unclear when after December 1 the course can be allowed to resume, he added.
Minister Darragh O’Brien said that hares are a protected species and that “it is better to be in the wild than in captivity in large groups.”
“There have been some claims that my intervention in the search for hare release would result in other people hunting them illegally. It has been claimed that this measure will make things easier for illegal hunters, as they would now know the location of large numbers of hares, ”he said.
“I would like to point out that after each ongoing meeting, the hares are released in any case, and these hares were in the wild until the last few weeks. I don’t see any reason why they should have been held during the time the course was suspended. “
The minister said that the National Park and Wildlife Service and the gardai have carried out several prosecutions in connection with illegal hunting of hares in recent years.
“Finally, there have been a number of erroneous claims on social media that the National Parks and Wildlife Service publishes the locations of hare release by ICC clubs. That is not the case at all and such claims are misleading and designed solely to serve an agenda that supports the retention of hares in continuous captivity, ”he added.
State Minister for Electoral Reform and Inheritance Malcolm Noonan added that the recently announced wildlife crime unit will ensure a “strategic and standardized approach to tackling the illegal prosecution of wildlife.”
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