Hares in peril as myxomatosis jumps species 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 (UEA) expert issued a joint appeal with two wildlife trusts last week to help discover the cause of a spate of hare deaths in the region.
Since then they 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, adding that she 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 South-West England.
Myxomatosis is highly infectious, typically transmitted via bloodsucking insects and nearly always proves fatal.
According to Dr Bell, Westminster’s 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 ‘sure’ it was myxomatosis killing the hares.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that in the worst case scenario the disease could wipe out the hare population. ‘From photos sent to me we’ve definitely got a jump of myxomatosis to hares,’ she said. ‘We’re talking about 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 UEA and Suffolk Wildlife Trust and Norfolk Wildlife Trust was launched following sightings of dead hares.
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.