Welfare considerations for wild hares and rabbits, including the welfare impacts of coursing, snaring, habitat management, and population dynamics.
Wild hares and rabbits face multiple welfare threats that range from deliberate human persecution to disease, habitat loss, and incidental harm from agricultural practices. Hare coursing represents an intentional welfare harm: dogs are used to chase hares, often causing injury through dog contact, exhaustion, and extreme fear responses. The welfare cost of coursing per animal is severe — not merely the risk of death but the acute terror and physiological stress of being pursued by predators in an unavoidable situation. Snaring is a less visible but widespread welfare problem: wire snares catch rabbits and hares through the neck or body, causing stress injuries, suffering, and significant bycatch mortality among non-target species. Myxomatosis causes a prolonged and highly visible form of suffering in wild rabbit populations that is difficult to address at scale but can be partially ameliorated through community programs to euthanize suffering rabbits found by the public. Rabbit hemorrhagic disease causes rapid but sometimes distressing mass mortality events that devastate local populations. Conservation of wild rabbit and hare habitat through agricultural payment schemes also supports welfare by maintaining healthy populations less vulnerable to disease impacts.