Local authorities are battling to deal with hundreds of stray and abandoned horses on their lands, with one council putting down 250 animals last year.

With numerous investigations continuing into the horsemeat scandal and how equine DNA entered the meat supply chain, Dublin City Council has revealed that last year it seized 254 horses, with all but four being put down. The cost of the Horse Seizure and Pound Service last year — recouped by the local authority from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine — was €182,997. 

The majority of the horses seized in the capital in 2012 came from three distinct areas: Cherry Orchard, where 89 animals were seized; Darndale/Coolock, where 70 horses were seized; and Ballyfermot, where 38 horses were recovered.

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Ireland’s vets are anticipating one of their busiest weekends of the year, fearing hundreds of family pets will be poisoned by Easter eggs.

As just one bar of chocolate or half an Easter egg can be fatal for a small dog, vets across the country are on high alert over the bank holiday weekend. Bray–based veterinary surgeon Pete Wedderburn said most pet owners are aware of the health dangers of giving their dogs chocolate.

However, he warned families to keep Easter eggs locked away to prevent dogs from gorging themselves to death. “A lot of people know not to give their dogs treats, but the real message I want to get out is that’s not the real danger. “The big danger is when dogs find a chocolate stash of some kind. They can smell chocolate through the wrappers.

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Animal rights campaigners have expressed fury that the Government has ignored calls for a ban on the killing of newborn animals by “concussion or blow to the head”.

Such a method might be used as a way of stopping an experiment in order to comply with a pain threshold. It may also be used if a researcher deems normal euthanasia methods such as injection might interfere with test results. Despite objections from the Irish Anti–Vivisection Society (IAVS), the new methods are approved in EU legislation which was recently signed off by James Reilly, the health minister. 

The IAVS claim it is an unreliable way of “humane” killing and that it will also lead to desensitisation among lab workers. 

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The animal lay silently in the darkness of the trailer, its eyes burning red in the viewfinder of the men’s night–vision camera. It seemed unperturbed by their presence, familiar with human attention. The two men knew the farm complex well. They had been here many times. They knew that deer were kept here in pens, fed, watered, cared for. They finished filming the animal, almost silently closed the trailer’s hatch, and slipped away into the night. They would see this animal again – soon. For some time, the USPCA had believed deer from the farm complex, near Hillsborough, were being ‘carted’ to be used in hunts. ‘Carting’ is when captive animals are moved by trailer to a location then released to be hunted.

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 A cull of around 5,000 badgers is set to go ahead this summer in a bid to tackle tuberculosis in cattle, the Environment Minister has announced. 

Pilot culls in west Gloucestershire and west Somerset, which will see the killing of 70 per cent of badgers in each area, were authorised by the Government after final licence conditions were met. 

A third scheme in Dorset is being prepared as a reserve to prevent any further delays.

Around 5,000 badgers are expected to be killed across the two areas over a four–year period as part of the cull. The two pilot culls were delayed last year in the face of bad weather and the discovery that there were more badgers in the areas than previously estimated.

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 Oscar Merne Born: November 6th, 1943 Died: January 17th, 2013 

Oscar Merne, who has died aged 69, has left an invaluable, if low–profile, legacy to Irish biodiversity, and thus to future generations of Irish people. He was deeply involved in the field work and reporting of every significant survey of Irish birds since the 1970s.

He grew up in south Co Dublin, in a family where happy engagement with the natural world, from swimming to fishing to bird–watching, was part of every weekend, and many weekdays too. 

For Merne, this passion became the core of his distinguished professional life with the Bird Research Unit of the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

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 Thousands of Ireland’s favourite garden birds have been struck down with a killer disease which starves them to death.

Trichomaniasis causes growths in bird’s mouths and stops them from eating and drinking.

Thousands of birds, including greenfinches, chaffinches, house sparrows (pictured) and doves, have been wiped out. 

There is no cure available for wild birds that have been infected .The worst–affected areas so far are Dublin, Kildare, Sligo and Mayo.

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Europe was not to blame for Tesco burgers containing large amounts of horse meat 

IMPORTED ingredients from Europe, which were suspected of contaminating Irish burgers with horse DNA, were not used in the production of Tesco burgers found to contain 29.1% horse meat.

Despite claims by Simon Coveney, the Irish agriculture minister, that this was the likely cause of contamination, ABP Food Group, owned by Larry Goodman, has confirmed that it did not use imported ingredients to make burgers for Tesco.

The supermarket chain has blamed its suppliers or their suppliers, saying they were guilty of “illegality or gross negligence”.

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Concerned animal welfare groups are being left to take care of ‘lost’ beagles and lurchers which had been part of either a legal hunt or, in some cases, poaching teams.

Some of the dogs abused by poaching teams are used for illegal badger baiting. The dogs are finding their way to nearby towns and villages and, according to the rescue groups, can be difficult to re–home, especially at this time of year when charities are full with unwanted Christmas pets. 

“Eventually they seem to migrate into towns, probably through hunger, with the result that almost every village seems to become home to one or sometimes more of these poor lost dogs,” said Carol Mansfield from Lily’s Dog Rescue in Co Cavan. 

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Short of turning up at court in a red coat and wielding a whip, district judge Tim Pattinson could not have made it more obvious that he thinks parliament was wrong to ban the setting of dogs on to wild animals for “sport” (Cameron’s old hunt fined £4,000 after RSPCA brings landmark prosecution, 18 December). The judge not only launched an outrageous attack on the RSPCA for achieving a successful corporate prosecution of the gang of criminal animal abusers known as the Heythrop hunt, but he also turned down the request for reasonable costs – castigating the society for spending £330,000 bringing these well–heeled members of the “Chipping Norton set” to justice.

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Waxwings, one of the most iconic Christmas birds, have flocked into Ireland in their greatest numbers for years.

The striking birds, which migrate from Lapland and even sound like sleigh bells, have been spotted in most parts of the country over the past week. 

The birds, which are instantly recognisable by their distinctive reddish–brown crest, tend to congregate in urban areas every winter, ornithologists say they’ve arrived in increased numbers and have travelled further west than usual, to counties such as Kerry and Sligo. 

Experts believe up to 5,000 of the birds have migrated from their summer Scandinavian homes to both Ireland and Britain. 

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From Ireland to Wales, with love 

The Donkey Sanctuary in Liscarroll has become known for its tireless dedication to donkey welfare.

Equally well known is the sanctuary’s Paddy Barrett who has spent a large part of his life caring for and rescuing abandoned and neglected donkeys. Paddy’s grandfather kept donkeys as long ago as 1926 and Paddy’s father, a welfare officer in the ISPCA (Irish Society for the Prevention for Cruelty to Animals) from 1964 to 1981.

Little wonder then that Paddy was reared with a keen appreciation for animal welfare and donkeys in particular. He too served as an ISPCA inspector for a number of years until the sanctuary in Liscarroll demanded all of his time. 

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 Fur farming should be allowed continue in Ireland despite widespread animal welfare concerns, a Department of Agriculture review has found. 

The news will come as a blow for animal rights activists who had been hopeful that a ban, promised under the Fianna Fáil/Green Party coalition, would be introduced at the end of this year. 

The five mink farms operating in Ireland are located in Donegal, Kerry, Laois, and Sligo. They account for around 200,000 to 225,000 mink, 62 full–time jobs, and salaries of €1.3m per year. Exports of mink are worth about €5m per year. 

The review group was set up this year by Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney, who said he would need a “good reason” to ban the practice, as his department would have to compensate owners of such farms by between €8m and €12m.

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Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney has said he would not rule out banning the use of animals in circuses.

He told the Select Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine that he would like to give the matter more thought after Socialist Party TD Clare Daly raised concerns. They were discussing amendments to the Animal Health and Welfare Bill. “My sense is that we should be probably trying to deal with it through regulation . . . but I don’t want to entirely rule that out,” Mr Coveney said.

Ms Daly said she had no problem with circuses that didn’t use animals, “but exploiting animals is certainly a different thing”.

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LIVE animals are increasingly being experimented on by Irish scientists, despite controversy over the practice.

Figures obtained by the Irish Independent show researchers in Trinity College spent more than €368,000 on live animals in only 12 months to use in tests aimed at treating disease in humans.

The figure is more than double what was spent the previous year.

Dogs, pigs, rabbits, mice and rats have been used in the university’s medical experiments, but there is pressure from the EU to find other ways of conducting tests.

The Trinity figures show the huge cost of “maintenance and welfare” during the same period, bringing the bill to €665,102.

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The native red squirrel is enjoying a change of fortune, thanks to the aggressive behaviour of pine martens. The alien grey squirrel is being routed from midland counties, with their numbers plummeting. The retreat of this American squirrel is proving a boon for our smaller native red squirrel, which is making a comeback in these areas, experts say. 

Scientists in NUI Galway tracking the grey squirrel’s decline believe that a resurgent pine marten may be causing the dramatic reversal in squirrel fortunes. Pine martens are cat–sized, tree–climbing predators that can catch and kill grey squirrels. 

“We confirmed that the grey squirrel population in the midland counties of Laois and Offaly has undergone a substantial decline,” says squirrel expert Dr Colin Lawton of NUI Galway. “The red squirrel, despite being considered absent from much of this area for a period of about 30 years, is once again widespread and common.”

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Animal welfare groups have hit out at Government plans to implement a loophole clause allowing Ireland to carry out experiments that inflict severe pain on animals in spite of an EU directive.

The issue involves Ireland’s transposition of an EU directive aimed at reducing animal pain and suffering and promoting non–animal research methods.

The directive will be transposed into Irish law this month and will become operational from Jan 1.

However, the Government also signalled its intention to implement a loophole clause with the directive, which would allow in “exceptional and scientifically justifiable” instances for “the use of a procedure involving severe pain, suffering or distress that is likely to be long–lasting and cannot be ameliorated”, including the use of non–human primates in experiments.

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Campaigners want heritage status to be granted to our native hounds

THE Irish Kennel Club (IKC) wants the government to give heritage status and special protection to the country’s native dog breeds. 

It is concerned that without such action breeds including the red and white setter, the Glen of Imaal terrier and the Kerry beagle, could disappear. The once–popular Kerry Blue and the Irish terrier are already being eclipsed by more fashionable dogs such as labradors and shih tzus. 

Seán Delmar, the president of the IKC, said: “There are nine breeds native to Ireland and they are all unique. They should be afforded protection as symbols of our heritage. 

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MPs have voted to abandon the controversial badger cull in England entirely, inflicting an embarrassing defeat on ministers who had already been forced to postpone the start of the killing until next summer. The motion in parliament to stop the cull was passed by 147 votes to just 28. The debate in the Commons on Thursday gave MPs the first opportunity to vote on the cull, which was intended to curb bovine tuberculosis in cattle. However, the government is not legally bound by the vote and could still press on regardless.

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England’s controversial badger cull has been postponed until next summer in an embarrassing U–turn by Owen Paterson, the environment secretary. Patterson said he remained “absolutely committed” to culling, but opponents of the kill pledged to continue the fight to get it abandoned. According to Paterson, the farmers charged with carrying out the cull, aimed at curbing the rise in bovine tuberculosis (TB) infection in cattle, were now unable to carry out the scheme before the start of winter, in part due to the higher than expected badger numbers. “It would be wrong to go ahead if those on the ground cannot be confident [of completing the cull],” he said.

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