Plea to prevent netting of hares on ‘idyllic’ island

Date Published: 22-Sep-2011

By Dara Bradley

On the eve of the start of the coursing season, an animal rights group has appealed to a local coursing club not to net hares from an island off Galway Bay.

The PRO of Campaign for the Abolition of Cruel Sports, John Fitzgerald, has written to Galway TDs, Senators and Councillors urging them to seek an end to all hare netting on Eddy Island, which is located across from Salthill close, as the crow flies, to Kinvara and Clarinbridge.

Mr Fitzgerald said the island is an “idyllic haven of tranquillity” and has called on the Galway and Oranmore Coursing Club to refrain from taking hares from the island this year.

Des Flaherty, the secretary of the Galway and Oranmore Coursing Club, which has 60 plus members, said it didn’t take any hares from the island last year and it hasn’t yet taken a decision from which preserves in the county it will take from this year.

Hare coursing is where two muzzled greyhounds chase a hare on a course in a field – whichever dog is in front by the time the hare reaches the ‘escape’. The coursing season begins in October and the Galway and Oranmore Coursing Club meeting will be held in mid-November, when hundreds of owners and coursing enthusiasts will attend. The meet is a qualifier for the national championships Clonmel in February.

Mr Flaherty stressed that all hares are replenished from the preserve they are taken from. In addition, there are tight controls on the netting of hares.

Mr Fitzgerald of Campaign for the Abolition of Cruel Sports, said netting hares on the island for coursing could damage the attraction of Galway Bay, “renowned as it is in song and story and feted worldwide as one of Ireland’s key tourist destinations”.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.