Farmers have slammed the Welsh government's inaction as the cost of attacks on livestock show that the situation in Wales has gone from bad to worse.
Farmer and well-known media personality Gareth Wyn Jones has criticised Cardiff's inaction over what he says is “the slaughter of defenceless animals on the hills of Wales."
A year ago the media was reporting that there were four times more attacks in Wales than in comparable parts of the UK.
Now new figures published by NFU Mutual show that, just in the last year in Wales, there has been a further doubling of attacks.
Elsewhere, in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the increase in dog attacks on sheep was only 11%.
This means that over the last three years, while attacks on livestock in the rest of the UK were up a third, in Wales there was a staggering four-fold increase in dog attacks.
In his assessment of the figures, Mr Wyn Jones, who farms in North Wales, said that allowing the use of e-collars could help reduce the number of attacks.
Campaigners have frequently called on the Welsh government to overturn the ban on e-collars, which are used to train dogs to associate sheep with a one-off static pulse, in turn helping the dog become wary of approaching them.
The Welsh government banned the training of dogs with e-collars in 2010, and in 2018, Scotland decided against following suit.
“The slaughter of defenceless animals on the hills of Wales has got even worse, yet down in Cardiff the Welsh government is pretending there is no crisis," Mr Wyn Jones said.
"We must do everything we can to save the dog’s life and the sheep’s life. Allowing e-collars to be used by properly trained people could help reduce the number of attacks.”
Founder of the Association of Responsible Dog Owners, Jamie Penrith, added that better training of dogs was needed and that the Welsh ban on safe aids such as e-collars needed an urgent rethink.
Mr Penrith said: "E-collar training creates a long-term aversion which stops the dog from ever wanting to approach sheep - even if they have escaped from their homes or owners.
"The Welsh government’s response of just encouraging owners to use leads is great for training humans, but completely fails to train the dogs.
"And it is the dogs which have the teeth which are causing so much suffering to Welsh sheep."
