HARE-RAISING MATTERS
CAMPAIGNERS CALL FOR A CLOSE SEASON FOR SHOOTING HARES TO INCREASE LEVERET NUMBERS.
New research has highlighted the need for a close season for hares, according to the scientists involved in the study.
Hares in England and Wales can be shot all year round, but they are most intensively targeted at the end of the pheasantshooting season in February.
However, by this time, say animal welfare campaigners, many female hares already have their first litter of the year. If mothers are killed when their leverets are fewer than four weeks old, there’s a good chance the young will die of starvation.
Dr Andrew Butterworth and Dr Katy Turner, from Bristol University’s School of Veterinary Sciences, and biologist Dr Nancy Jennings, showed in a modelling exercise that young hares in areas of the country where the adult animals are most intensively shot, are 25 times more likely to die due to orphaning and subsequent starvation than those in Scotland.
That’s because Scotland – along with at least 22 other European countries – has a close season when shooting is not permitted. Scotland’s runs from February to September.
But Glynn Evans, for the British Association for Shooting & Conservation, says a code of conduct already commits shooters not to target hares after the end of February each year. “Not having a close season allows farmers to be confident they can support a large hare population, knowing they can take the odd hare out if they need to,” he says.
Butterworth takes an opposing view. “The effect of killing one animal in February can be unexpectedly significant,” he says. “If we know by shooting hares, we’re starving their young, then we’re ignoring a known problem.”
Mark Jones, of Born Free (which recently merged with Care for the Wild, one of the groups that helped fund the research), said there were conservation, considerations, too.
“The UK has failed to meet its target for the recovery of brown hare populations,” Jones says, “and we have a situation where they can be shot in the early part of their breeding season.”