ANIMAL owners have said that further measures need to be brought in to restrict private fireworks displays because of the distress they cause to pets and livestock.
The JEP reported during November that local dog owner JJ Gallagher felt that this year’s bonfire night celebrations were the “worst” he had experienced in over a decade of living in Jersey.
As 2025 approaches, Mr Gallagher, a member of the Jersey Dog Forum and recent winner of a Pride of Jersey award for his efforts to find lost dogs with the help of his pooch Sammie, still believes that further measures should be introduced to limit private firework displays.
“The main problem we have currently in Jersey is the strength of the fireworks that the public can buy,” he said.
“Event organisers will have a risk assessment which would cover noise limitations, location, all that sort of stuff. But any member of the public can get a fireworks box with two kilograms’ worth of gunpowder in it to set off in their back garden.
“Most of them have an exclusion area of between 15 and 25 metres. Nobody living in St Helier has an exclusion zone in their back garden of 25 metres.
“It’s those [fireworks] that are so loud; they are what cause the pandemonium with dogs, horses, donkeys, cows and everything else.”
Jersey and Guernsey
Unlike Jersey, Islanders in Guernsey are encouraged to fill in a registration form alerting the government of the intended location, timings and usage of fireworks. Anyone over the age of 18 can buy fireworks in Jersey, whereas Guernsey limits sales to those aged over 20.
Bonfires are also restricted in Guernsey for animal welfare reasons to just five days a year, between 3 and 7 November inclusive.
Mr Gallagher added that Sammie had endured over ten days of fireworks before and after 5 November, including when the Island was shrouded in thick fog, rendering any displays almost meaningless.
He added: “I would absolutely love for them [government] to look at the noise decibels of the fireworks going off. Currently [in Jersey], it’s just a free-for-all.”
Horses
Dog owners are not the only ones who feel that more regulation should be brought in to prevent animals from being adversely affected.
One Islander told the JEP that her horse died as a result of a neighbour’s garden display four years ago, which she was not warned about.
Rebecca Hefford said her horse broke its back in four places and was “banging its head against the wall” because of the stress caused by the display’s loud noises.
“Our next-door neighbours had a huge bonfire and fireworks and they didn’t tell us. They [the fireworks] were all landing on top of the stables,” she said.
The three-year-old horse was “terrified”, Ms Hefford added.
“I tried to comfort him, but I couldn’t go in [to his enclosure]. He would have killed me,” she explained.
Even though her horse suffered, Ms Hefford said that she had not “got anything against fireworks”, but does believe that “someone should be responsible” for informing owners or asking for written permission before displays go ahead.
She added: “If a child was ever hurt or if I had gone in the stable and got killed, it would have been a different matter.”
Sedation can be used by owners to help their horses cope with the displays, but that “can get expensive”, with each round costing up to hundreds of pounds per horse.
Ms Hefford continued: “Nowadays they [displays] are going on all the time. You can’t keep sedating a horse – that’s not good for it.”
Moreover, not much can be done for Ms Hefford’s 180 birds, which she said had also suffered as a result of the noise.
“During the fireworks, the poor birds were sitting on their eggs and they all left their nests. I try to think what it does to all the wild ones as well,” she explained.
Claire Foster, a horse and dog owner, added that while it was a “tradition” to set off fireworks at certain times of the year, their use should be limited outside of those dates.
She said: “While I think fireworks will always be a part of our tradition in celebrating Guy Fawkes’ Night and New Year’s Eve, they should only be sold to licensed people for official displays and their use should be for those two days only.
“I would like to further advocate the use of silent fireworks. With technology nowadays, effective displays can be put to music, which I think is far nicer for everyone, including animals.”
Another horse owner added that debris from displays added to the potential harm that could be caused to animals.
“Huge amounts of sharp shards of debris are the product of exploded fireworks which fall into fields. There is a lot of pollution and my greatest concern is for the livestock which might ingest the shards while munching on the grass,” they said.
St Martin’s Bonfire
Firework displays can be a force for good, as proved by this year’s St Martin’s Bonfire display (pictured below), which raised £36,000 for the Jersey Child Care Trust.
Lester Richardson, who chairs the St Martin Bonfire Committee, said that although it “wasn’t [his] place” to comment on any restrictions to fireworks, he acknowledged that private displays were often later at night and were not as well advertised as bigger celebrations.
“Everybody knows about our event. We advertise all over the place: on Facebook, on all sorts of social media. So everybody knows it’s happening. It’s always around 8.30pm and it lasts for about ten minutes. Whereas I’ve heard of people having fireworks at 10.30pm or 11pm at night.”
Mr Richardson added that his event, being so popular, was often blamed for any fireworks display happening around the Island.
He said: “We had a complaint this year from somebody in St Helier about our fireworks display and then we found out that the noise was much later on than when our display was. Somebody then told us that there was lots of big bangs in the middle of St Helier somewhere.
“Sometimes we get blamed for something that’s not even our fault.”
Former minister wanted ‘greater controls’
Former Home Affairs Minister Helen Miles said in 2022 that she wanted “greater controls” on the availability of fireworks.
She made the comments while responding to a petition lodged by a member of the public to “make fireworks with a bang illegal in Jersey to prevent the stress of animals”, which eventually gained 2,639 signatures.
