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Campaign newsletter of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports (ICABS)PO Box 88, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, Ireland. www.banbloodsports.com

01. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

ICABS wishes all its friends and supporters a happy Saint Patrick’s Day. Please remember the animals on this special day. Photocopythis edition of Animal Voice and give to your friends. If you or your friends would prefer to receive Animal Voice by email, pleaseforward your email address to us at info@banbloodsports.com Thank you all for your continued support.

02. Minister urged to revoke deer hunt licence

The Irish Council Against Blood Sports is calling on Environment Minister, John Gormley, to urgently revoke the licence he issued tothe Ward Union carted deer hunt in December. Our appeal comes in the wake of the High Court's granting of an injunction to thehunt, preventing the Minister from imposing the conditions that disallowed them from using dogs to chase the deer and forced them tocapture the deer before unleashing the pack.The Irish Council Against Blood Sports has always contended that this hunt is illegal and should never have been licensed under theWildlife Act, because the deer hunted by the Ward Union are farmed deer, not wild animals, and therefore not subject to the WildlifeAct.This contention has been borne out in a legal opinion which concludes that the Ward Union hunt is "illegal" under the 1911 Protectionof Animals Act, and that it shouldn't be licensed under the 1976 Wildlife Act (Professors Clive Symmons and William Binchy of Trinity School of Law, November 2007)

URGENT ACTION ALERT

Urgently contact Environment Minister, John Gormley, and appeal to him to immediately revoke the licence he issued to the WardUnion in December.

Sample Letter

Minister John GormleyDepartment of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Custom House, Dublin 1.Email: minister@environ.ie Tel: 01 888 2403. Fax: 01 878 8640.Dear Minister Gormley,I am writing to urge you to immediately revoke the licence granted to the Ward Union hunt last December. The captive bred,domesticated deer used by the hunt are protected animals under the Protection of Animals Act and may not be legally hounded byhunters. It is contrary to existing legislation to licence the activities of this hunt.As a Green Party Minister opposed to blood sports, I trust that you will do everything in your power to end the Ward Union'sterrorisation of deer. Please urgently revoke the licence and refuse further licences to this cruel hunt which a majority of people inCounty Meath and many more around Ireland and the world want stopped.Thank you. I look forward to your response.Yours sincerely,[Name/Location]

03. New ICABS Banner: Please display today

Help spread the word about the campaign against blood sports in Ireland. Please display the new ICABS banner on your website orprofile page. Thank you.To display the banner on a website page, please copy the following code into your page:<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://homepage.eircom.net/~icabs3/banbloodsports2.swf" width="392px"height="72px"></embed>

2To display the banner on a MySpace profile page, please use the following code:<a href = "http://www.banbloodsports.com" target = "_blank"><img src = "http://homepage.eircom.net/~icabs3/banbloodsports.gif"border = "0"></a>For more linking options, please click on Links at www.banbloodsports.com

04. Galway fox chased for 80 minutes

A fox had to endure a gruelling 80 minute chase during a hunt in County Galway, according to an Irish Field report. "As soon as [thehuntsman] cast his pack in Pump Bog, they found a fox and were away for what was to be a run of one hour and twenty minutes," thereport stated, adding that the hunt terrier was among the dogs chasing the unfortunate fox.The report on the Grallagh Harriers suggests that this particular fox managed to get away but it's more than likely that the creature wasin a poor state afterwards. Research has shown that foxes chased by hounds suffer internal injuries, leaving them at risk of dying evenif they eventually escape.

ACTION ALERT

Please help foxes by responding to our "Ban Foxhunting Action Alerts" [26] below and forwarding them to all your friends.

05. Appalling hunt cruelty: Fox forced to swim for its life

A fox being chased by a pack of hunt hounds was forced to swim across a canal twice in a desperate bid to try and save its life.ICABS has asked landowners to help protect wildlife from this appalling abuse by banning hunts from their property.This latest instance of hunt cruelty was outlined in a report about the Westmeath Foxhounds published in the Irish Field (2nd February2008). This is the same hunt which, last December, admitted mercilessly digging a fox out of its earth and seeing hounds tear itasunder."The fox and the pack swam across the canal and continued along the banks to the Mullingar/Ballynacargy Road," the disturbingreport reveals. From here, "the fox, with four and a half couple (9 hounds) in pursuit, swam the canal again before retracing their stepsback to Newman's Bog."The Irish Council Against Blood Sports dreads to think of the awful fear and suffering endured by the fox as it did everything itpossibly could to try and lose the pack.We have this week appealed to landowners in Westmeath to consider the canal fox's terrible ordeal and consider the cruelty theyfacilitate by inviting hunts on to their land. "Please stand up for our wildlife heritage by posting 'No Hunting' signs along propertyboundaries and putting a notice in your local paper warning hunts to stay away," we appealed.We also asked hunt followers uncomfortable with the cruelty to press for a changeover to draghunting. We told them that "this 21stCentury alternative will not take away your enjoyment of following hounds along waterways, over stone walls and across bogs but itwill ensure that a day's sport will never again depend on a bedraggled fox drenched in canal water and sweat running to save its life."Please help foxes by responding to our "Ban Foxhunting Action Alerts" [26] below and forwarding them to all your friends.

06. RTE classifies coursing as sport: Join our appeal now

RTE is defending its decision to include hare coursing in a radio sports report. ICABS has urged the station to stop presenting animalcruelty as sport, saying that "many would struggle to comprehend how sport could ever encompass an activity based on greyhoundschasing hares and causing them stress, injury and sometimes death."Responding to our appeal from earlier this week, a spokesperson for RTE said that the station "neither approves nor disapproves of coursing" but that since it is legal, they will continue to cover it.Peter Feeney, RTE's Head of Public Affairs Policy, defended this decision on the basis that the blood sport "remains supported bymany people in Ireland". This claim has been strongly refuted by ICABS.In an email to RTE today, ICABS stressed that coursing is very much a minority activity and that many people actually want itoutlawed by the government.

3"Every survey since the 1970s has shown that most people want it banned," we stated. "The latest opinion poll from Millward Brown(2007) found that 72 per cent of respondents believe coursing is cruel, with a massive 68 per cent favouring a ban. We can assumefrom this that the majority of licence fee payers would find the portrayal of animal cruelty as a sport to be highly offensive andinappropriate."ICABS also challenged a suggestion that including coursing in a sports report was consistent with RTE's policy of fairly reflecting allsides."We welcome RTE's balanced coverage of this issue on Six One News but the radio report certainly didn't 'reflect fairly all sides'," westated. "We hope RTE can side with the majority of Irish people and stop giving positive coverage to coursing in the future."

ACTION ALERT

Please join us in urging RTE to keep cruelty out of its sports reports.

SAMPLE LETTER

(If you have time, please compose your own personal letter. Otherwise, feel free to send the short sample letter below. Be assertive,but polite, in all correspondence. Thank you.)RTE RadioDonnybrook, Dublin 4Email: info@rte.ie CC: info@banbloodsports.com Tel: 01 208 3111. Fax: 01 208 3080.Dear RTE,I wish to express my great disapproval of RTE Radio's inclusion of hare coursing in a sports report earlier this month. Coursingshould never be classified as a sport by your station - it is one of Ireland's worst forms of animal cruelty and a majority of people inIreland want it banned.RTE - Please keep cruelty out of your sports reports!Thank you.Yours faithfully,[Name/Location]

07. Coursing cruelty highlighted to Clonmel mayor

The mayor of Clonmel has been asked to consider the cruelty of coursing and stop supporting the blood sport. The call comes after theProgressive Democrats councillor was pictured in a local paper at the town's coursing finals.In a letter to Mayor Richie Molloy, the Irish Council Against Blood Sports expressed disappointment that he deemed it appropriate toattend an event involving cruelty to animals."Considering the animal cruelty involved in coursing and the fact that a huge majority of Irish people want this blood sport banned,we hope that you can reconsider your stance," we stated.Cllr Molloy was also provided with extracts from National Parks and Wildlife Service reports which reveal how hares continue tosuffer during coursing meetings. The documents refer to a hare which "had a badly broken hind leg and seemed to be in greatdistress", a hare "carrying a hind leg", a hare suffering from "a damaged hind toe" and a hare which "squealed with distress and/orpain" after being "tossed and badly mauled".Please join us in our appeal to Mayor Molloy to rid his town of this shameful animal cruelty festival. Suggest that Clonmel's imagewould benefit from the replacement of hare coursing with the humane alternative, drag coursing.

ACTION ALERT

Ask Mayor Molloy to shun animal cruelty and stop supporting coursing meetings held in Clonmel. Tell him that coursing involves along line of cruelty from the moment the hares are netted from the wild up to the moment they are forced to run for their lives in frontof the greyhounds. Ask him to watch our coursing video - www.youtube.com/icabs - which shows just some of the maulings sufferedby hares during coursing meets.Councillor Richie MolloyMayor of Clonmel, Clonmel Town Council, Clonmel, Co TipperaryEmail: cllrrichie.molloy@southtippcoco.ie Tel: (052)-29362 or 086-1967482