Mountain hares face a perfect storm of threats — climate change disrupting their camouflage, legal culling on grouse moors, and habitat pressures — that combine to create significant welfare and conservation concerns.
Mountain hares experience welfare harm from multiple directions simultaneously. The camouflage mismatch from climate-disrupted snow creates elevated predation risk during the winter period when hares are physiologically stressed. Legal culling using organised drives can cause high wounding rates where many animals are shot at simultaneously. The chronic stress of living in landscapes with elevated predator pressure (both natural and from increased crow and raptor activity associated with managed grouse moors) impairs immune function and reproductive success. Population fragmentation from isolated mountain massifs reduces genetic diversity, increasing disease susceptibility across already-stressed populations. The combination of these pressures creates a compounding welfare and conservation crisis.