Brown hares are iconic farmland mammals whose welfare is directly tied to the quality of agricultural landscapes. Their decline reflects wider farmland ecosystem collapse.
Brown hare welfare is inseparable from farmland management. Intensive arable with no field margins, late-cut silage, and autumn-drilled crops provides inadequate habitat for hares to breed successfully. Leverets left in grass fields are killed by silage cutters in large numbers. Illegal coursing - chasing with dogs - causes severe stress, injury, and death. The welfare of adult hares caught by coursing dogs is extreme - pursuit causes physiological shock responses that can be fatal even without contact wounds. Maintaining traditional mixed farming with field margins is the foundation of brown hare welfare.