Wildlife crime on rise: The gruesome world of badger baiting
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The workmen at Croagh stopped in their tracks one afternoon earlier this year when they saw two unusual holes dug in a slope.
They had been examining the area as part of work on the Foynes-Limerick Road Improvement Scheme when they noticed the deep, oval holes. Surrounded by freshly dug clay and close to a known and protected badger sett, the holes immediately aroused suspicion.
Gardaí were called and they confirmed the holes were evidence of one of Ireland’s most secretive but prolific wildlife crimes: badger baiting, the deliberate digging out and trapping of badgers by men with dogs at night. The badgers are either killed by hunting dogs on the spot or taken out and later thrown as live bait into a pre-constructed dog fighting arena where they are mauled to death, often in front of a paying audience.
The Croagh badger sett borders land belonging to Adare-Rathkeale Fine Gael Councillor Stephen Keary. “I don’t condone that type of behaviour, they’re part of our wildlife and that’s it,” he told the . He knows of other badger setts nearby and on his own land. He leaves them alone but admits he doesn’t like them there, due to the risk they pose of spreading TB to his cattle.
He believes badger populations need to be controlled “to some degree” but says this should be done “humanely.” He has no idea of the identity of the culprits in this case but says he “wouldn’t like to have much dealings with them, they could be nasty.”
The sett remains sealed off and work on that particular spot of the new road is prohibited for now. Gardaí appealed for witnesses at the time and while “the matter remains under investigation” no breakthrough is expected.
The Croagh discovery, though rare, confirms what many fear is a nationwide activity. Intentionally disturbing or interfering with a sett is strictly illegal and a criminal offence under the Wildlife Acts. The National Parks and Wildlife Service describes badger baiting as a “harmful and serious offence”, terms which do little to portray its gruesome reality.
Apart from poisoning birds of prey, it’s one of the biggest wildlife crimes in this country. According to several animal rights organisations, it’s rife everywhere, but very hard to catch in the act and even harder to prosecute. It’s not limited to rural areas either.
In January 2023, an NPWS park ranger came upon a group of men in Tymon Park, Tallaght, who were armed with dogs and shovels. He called the Gardaí but the gang had fled by the time Gardaí arrived. No one was arrested.
“I just think it’s appalling,” Independent South Dublin County Councillor Mick Duff told the . “He was a lone ranger there on his own. He felt very intimidated obviously by them because they had all their dogs and their digging tools with them but they were never caught,” he said.
“I absolutely abhor the practice or anybody doing it. I just think our wildlife is precious and we have to do everything we can to protect it,” he said.
In July 2022, the Wexford Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (WSPCA) had some success when a young Wexford man was convicted of badger baiting. The case was reportedly so vile the judge refused to look at the photos.
The then WSPCA vet Dr Peter Murphy, who had to euthanise the dog involved, rated the cruelty inflicted as “a nine or ten".
In the final act of his veterinary career, Dr Murphy broke down in court recalling the case. Speaking afterwards, he said “I spent my last moments being one of the relatively few people who stand for the animals as their only defence along with magnificent people from many other Animal Protection Agencies.”
The defendant was fined €5,000 and banned from owning animals for 10 years. He was not jailed or named in court reports, a matter of outrage for some people at the time.
A particularly disturbing badger baiting case made shockwaves over the border just last month when 36-year-old Fermanagh man Jason Lee Kennedy received a rare custodial sentence for causing suffering to badgers and cats through baiting and fighting which he recorded and supplied to others.
Kennedy, of Marble Arch Road, Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, initially denied but later pleaded guilty at Dungannon Crown Court to six counts of baiting of badgers and cats between June 28 and July 4, 2022. He was first arrested in March 2023 after the PSNI got a tip-off from a member of the public about a number of distressed dogs at his property in the Derrylin area of Fermanagh.
They found several terriers with old injuries and one with fresh wounds. According to a PSNI source close to the investigation, the dog “looked like it was going to pass away.” It required surgery just to be able to breath properly after his nose had been bitten off.
Most badger baiters don’t keep any photos or videos of their crimes on their phones and change mobiles regularly. The PSNI investigators got lucky though — Kennedy was a show off.
He was training his dogs to fight and kept recordings of dog fights to share with his friends. When police seized his phone that day they found 12 videos of such a gruesome nature that the details are too severe to report.
In short, a number of cats were recorded being mauled to death after being put into pens with groups of dogs. In another, a badger was “dragged by a rope” into a pen where nine dogs set about a vicious attack. The badger is heard squealing in pain and distress “yet no-one sought to intervene at any time,” noted Judge Fiona Bagnall at his sentence hearing on June 21.
Summing up, she described the violence as “gratuitous” and said the animals “clearly suffered prolonged agonising deaths.” She imposed a sentence of two years and three months and banned Kennedy from owning any animal for 10 years.
It caused shockwaves throughout the region, not just for Kennedy himself who had been expecting a slap on the wrist and a suspended sentence, but his wider circle of associates. “It certainly shocked him. As were all his friends,” said another police source.
It’s known Kennedy did not act alone. His circle, according to the source, “would be known to police". “They were the type of people who have done this for a long, long time, almost in a business way, like organised crime potentially,” said the source.
Fights are advertised and arranged on closed social media groups. “When they’re digging badgers out of setts, they’ll advertise it around, say ‘we know there’s a badger here, do you want in?’ They would trap the badgers, then people would come down to them or they would bring the badgers up somewhere so people would pay them to get their dog in with the badger. They’re happy enough to stand there and watch the badger be gnawed to death.”
“It’s over the whole of the north, the whole of Ireland, coming into September it’ll kick off again,” they said. It typically takes place September to March, in the long dark evenings when the cattle are gone from the fields and there’s few people about.
Ulster Badger watch founder Peter Clarke’s Operation Broc Watch places cameras next to setts to deter would-be baiters. “It has worked as a really good deterrent,” he said. “It’s really big here, there’s lots of gangs that go round doing it. They’re very clandestine.
"They do it at the same time as hunting foxes, so that would be the cover they would use. Normally they do it on a Sunday. It’s just blood lust, they just enjoy killing. It would normally be men in their 20s and 30s. It’s how well their dogs perform. It’s really sick,” said Clarke.
USPCA Chief Executive Nora Smith said they had identified "more than 150 offenders" who engage in "this monstrous crime". "It is heartbreaking to know that at least 2,500 defenceless badgers are persecuted and die in such an horrific way every year."
Could such CCTV work down south? “It probably would help, yes,” agreed Cllr Keary, “provided they could be obscured. If it wasn’t obscured it wouldn’t last long, it’d be damaged or removed.”
Wildlife crime is not confined to thugs in fields. On March 7, Dublin property developer Con McCarthy (61) was ordered to donate €15,000 to several animal charities after he was found to have “entombed” a badger family on a site in west Dublin where he was building warehouse units by dumping trunks of trees and many tonnes of clay on top of their sett.
The NPWS said it has successfully closed 156 wildlife crime prosecution cases out of 183 cases taken since 2019. It doesn’t currently hold records on the number of alleged reports of wildlife crime, however.
These include the disturbance of bats, illegal hare or deer hunting, birds of prey poisoning, badger digging, damage to Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), unlawful destruction of vegetation in hedgerows and unlawful gorse burning within the restricted period, to name a few.
Minister for Nature, Heritage and Electoral Reform, Malcolm Noonan, began a review of the existing laws on June 27 and the public has until September 13 to submit their views on wildlife crime. It’s been welcomed by animal rights groups such as the National Animal Rights Association (NARA) which will be pushing for a ban on hare coursing and enforcement of the laws already there.
“We need more gardaí — wildlife crime happens every night of the week,” says NARA founder Laura Broxson. “There needs to be proper tip-off lines, patrols, the NPWS needs to be patrolling hot spots and the Gardaí needs to be enforcing it. We hope the public will see things similarly and bombard them,” she adds.
Spokesperson for the Party for Animal Welfare, Eve Parnell, agrees. “The destruction of habitat by all and sundry is going on with absolutely no enforcement,” she says. “When people do try to seek enforcement, you’re literally laughed out of it,” she said. “There is a mindset that it’s ok to wipe wildlife out of the way.”
The Irish Council Against Bloodsports will be prioritising an end to the hunting of wildlife with dogs and better enforcement. The PSNI have a dedicated Wildlife Crime Liaison Team, something missing down here.
Senator Lynn Boylan and TD Sean Haughey have previously called on Justice Minister Helen McEntee to establish a promised Wildlife Crime Unit. In the meantime, the NPWS has set up a Directorate on Wildlife Crime to help their rangers deal with enforcement on the frontline.
Should our laws and punishments be tougher? “Possibly, but how is it going to be policed?” wonders Cllr Keary. “We can’t even police our streets never mind police our wildlife in the natural countryside. I think it’s a major challenge.”