Britain’s hares in peril as deadly myxomatosis spreads from rabbits
HARES are in danger of being wiped out by an outbreak of a deadly disease which has spread from rabbits, a leading expert warned yesterday.
Myxomatosis, which arrived in Britain in the 1950s and resulted in the deaths of 99 per cent of the rabbit population, has now jumped to hares, Dr Diana Bell believes. The University of East Anglia expert issued a joint appeal with two local wildlife trusts last week to help discover the cause of a spate of mysterious hare deaths in the region.
Since t hen t hey have been flooded with an ‘overwhelming’ number of responses from across Britain, Dr Bell said.
The expert, from the university’s School of Biological Sciences, said she was aware of hundreds of cases but believed it was ‘the tip of the iceberg’.
Britain’s brown hare population has seen a decline of more than 80 per cent in the past 100 years, due to hunting and illegal hare coursing. The animals, which have longer hind legs than rabbits and black-tipped ears as long as their heads, are almost entirely absent in the South West.
Myxomatosis is highly infectious and symptoms include runny and swollen eyes. The disease, which is typically transmitted via blood-sucking insects, is nearly always fatal.
According to Dr Bell, the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) classes a mass mortality event as three deaths in close vicinity – and she said she has received reports of six or seven dead hares together.
Asked about suggestions that the deaths may be down to another disease called coccidiosis, which attacks the intestines of animals, Dr Bell said she was ‘absolutely sure’ it was myxomatosis killing the hares.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday that in the worst case scenario, the disease could wipe out the hare population. ‘From the photographs that have been sent in to me we’ve definitely got a jump of myxomatosis to hares,’ she said.
‘We’re talking about certainly hundreds [of cases] I know about and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.’
There have been cases of myxomatosis killing hares in Spain, said Dr Bell. The joint appeal by the Univer- sity of East Anglia and Suffolk Wildlife Trust and Norfolk Wildlife Trust was launched following a spate of sightings of dead hares from farmers and the public.
Defra said myxomatosis had been recorded sporadically in British hares but that it had not confirmed any cases this year via its agency, the Animal and Plant Health Agency. Its wildlife service would continue to work closely with Dr Bell and her team, it added.