World's largest rodent brought into Northern Ireland gets tangled up in Brexit and Irish Sea border red tape

A prosecuting lawyer told the court how Foorde’s vet alerted the authorities when they treated the capybara which, in the end, sadly died, and they were able to trace it back to Foorde.

When investigators from the wildlife team spoke to her at her home on Holstein Crescent in Belfast, Foorde confirmed she owned the animal but she was unaware she needed authority and supporting documentation to bring the animal into NI.

From her interviews and subsequent investigations, it transpired that she had approached pet shop owner Dickinson who sourced the capybara in Cambridge and Hammond had acted as a courier to bring the capybara, described as a “large guinea pig”, into the country.

Ms Foorde in her interviews stressed that no documentation was required on mainland UK and defence counsel Barry Gibson, appearing for Hammond, confirmed that before Brexit and a change in the rules, the trio of defendants would not have been guilty of anything.

“Mr Hammond is a farmer but he also has an interest in rare breed poultry,” said the barrister, adding that when he brought the capybara across the Irish Sea, “he was operating under the old guidance”.

He highlighted that unlike a lot of animal transportation cases, this was not a case where the animal was being smuggled in to be sold on the black market, submitting that “this is all as a result of Brexit and the regulations changing”.

James Toal, acting for Dickinson, revealed that with a background “of business involved in parrots,” he was able to source a capybara in Cambridge which had been imported from Germany and it was he who arranged its transportation from UK to NI.

The capybara, the largest rodent in the world and also called carpincho or water hog, inhabits forests and wetlands from Panama to Argentina, growing up to about 4.3 feet long and weighing up to 174 pounds.

Capybaras are short-haired brownish rodents with blunt snouts, short legs, small ears, and almost no tail. They are shy and associate in groups along the banks of lakes and rivers.

Imposing two-year conditional discharges on all three defendants, District Judge Rosie Watters said while Dickinson was probably “more culpable” than the other two, “it’s very difficult for me to know what people should’ve done at this stage”.