HOBBY trainers have been caught in the crossfire of the horses on beaches battle, according to Chris Ryan.
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The Killarney racehorse trainer was one of a handful of non-professional trainers – including some families that had ridden horses on local beaches for more than half a century – who used The Cutting and The Basin on a daily basis.
During their time training horses there, hooded plovers in the area thrived.
“If I thought we were affecting the environment I wouldn’t do it,” Mr Ryan said.
“When we would ride (at The Cutting and The Basin), we often told people to keep hold of their dogs because there were hooded plovers in the area.”
In the summer of 2015-16, everything changed.
“The trouble started when a couple of big trainers started going to Killarney Beach and taking 70 horses a day,” Mr Ryan said.
“It was frustrating to see someone come in who was all money and blast it and upset everyone.”
Mr Ryan said the local community quite rightly reacted strongly to this equine takeover, but that’s when the “emotive issue” of the hooded plover was raised.
Unfortunately for Mr Ryan and his fellow Killarney trainers, the hooded plovers they had co-existed with and which had thrived despite their presence became a weapon that was turned against them.
Mr Ryan said the threatened species doesn’t nest on Killarney Beach, which is where the trouble started, because of the regular presence of people and dogs.
But turning the spotlight on the area and the birds led to horse training being banned at The Basin and only allowed at The Cutting for four months of the year.
“The whole reason I moved out here (in 2012) was so I could ride horses on the beach,” he said.
“This (issue) has been a bit of a disaster for us.”
Mr Ryan, who works four horses at a time at most, said limited access to Killarney Beach for local trainers would be “compensation” but his “number one goal was to try and get back on The Cutting and The Basin”.
“When people saw you riding on the beach before (the big trainers came along) they would be really rapt and would be taking photographs.
“We added to the experience on the beach. But now its had a lot of negative publicity,” he said.