Brown Hare: Ecology and Welfare
The brown hare (Lepus europaeus) is one of Britain's most charismatic mammals, famous for its "mad March" boxing displays and extraordinary speed. Yet populations have declined by over 80% since the 1960s, driven primarily by agricultural intensification. Individual brown hares face welfare challenges from both natural predation and human activities.
Ecology and Behaviour
Brown hares are largely nocturnal and crepuscular, resting in "forms" (shallow depressions in vegetation) during daylight. Unlike rabbits, they do not burrow — leverets (young hares) are born fully furred and mobile, relying on dispersal and concealment rather than a nest for protection. The mother visits leverets briefly each night to nurse — a dispersal strategy that reduces predator attraction to any single location.
Hares are grazers and browsers, requiring diverse grassland habitats with a mixture of short grazing for food and taller vegetation for cover. Agricultural simplification — large monoculture fields, early-cut silage, autumn-sown crops — reduces habitat diversity and food availability throughout the year.
Population Decline and Conservation
Hare populations on lowland farmland are particularly severely declined. Intensive arable systems provide inadequate cover, food diversity, and safety from agricultural operations. Game management areas — where hare shooting is controlled and habitat maintained for game species — often support higher hare densities, demonstrating the potential population if appropriate habitat management is applied.
Agri-environment scheme options (wild bird seed mixes, grass margins, delayed cutting) benefit hares as well as farmland birds, demonstrating the connectivity of conservation goals across taxa.
Individual Welfare Considerations
Hare coursing and hare hunting with dogs cause significant welfare concern — hares are chased to exhaustion, sustaining injury from dog bites before capture or death. Coursing was banned in England and Wales under the Hunting Act 2004, though illegal coursing continues. Agricultural machinery (particularly silage cutting and harvest equipment) kills and injures hares annually — checking fields before cutting and driving slowly to allow escape reduces these welfare impacts.
Hare Boxing and Social Behaviour
The famous "boxing" behaviour — typically a female (doe) boxing a pursuing male (jack) to test or deter him — is a social interaction rather than aggression. Multiple males may pursue a receptive doe in a chase that represents one of British wildlife's most dramatic displays. These interactions occasionally result in minor injuries but are normal reproductive behaviour.