Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
A few years ago, I reared a baby hare — a leveret — that had been chased by a dog and separated from its mother. I didn’t cage the hare or treat her as a pet, and she lived freely between my home and the wild. She ranged the fields at night and, by day, slept in the house, one day giving birth to leverets behind a curtain in my office.
This life-changing experience inspired me to join forces with veterinarians, conservationists, wildlife photographers, historians, parliamentarians, landowners and other authors to try to replace the current archaic regulations in England and Wales with legislation that prevents hares being shot during their breeding season. Together, we have written an open letter to the prime minister urging the government to end this cruel practice by bringing in a “close season”: a period of the year — from February 1 to September 30 — during which hares cannot be shot.
The hare and her leverets were wild and would race out of the house if I startled them. They whiled away the daylight hours asleep on the sofa or windowsill, slipping outside to race in circles or eat dandelions as dusk fell, before leaving to roam the landscape. To this day they return: the third generation of leverets descending from the mother hare were recently born in my garden.
I can’t help but contrast their gentle, regular habits with the way hares have been regarded for centuries. The phrases “hare-brained” and “mad as a March hare” are shorthand for unwise, erratic behaviour. Aesop’s fabled complacent, arrogant hare loses the race to the plodding tortoise. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a hare is synonymous with cowardice, and women tarred with allegations of witchcraft were accused of shape-shifting into hares.
Might these misconceptions account in part for why hares are the only “game species” (as defined by the 1831 Game Act) in England and Wales that can be shot at any time of the year? All others — including deer and pheasants — have a respite from shooting during their mating period, but hares are treated differently, and the results are cruel. If a hare is shot while nursing leverets, her young starve to death.
The peak season for hare shooting is February. Research by the University of Bristol shows that the spring is the worst time to shoot hares, since most females are either pregnant or lactating — or both — while the population has suffered losses during winter. Successive governments have accepted that hares should be protected during the breeding season, but failed to convert this commitment into law. There have been several attempts by parliamentarians to bring about a close season in the past decade, but each has fallen by the wayside.
Some opponents to a close season argue that it isn’t necessary, because a voluntary code of conduct advises against killing hares in late winter. But this doesn’t account for shoots in February, which, according to the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, can wipe out as much as 60 per cent of the breeding population. Others point out that there are many other threats to hares — including illegal hare coursing (hunting with dogs) — which wouldn’t be solved by a ban on shooting during the breeding season. This is surely an argument in favour of having a close season: we should ensure this basic protection while addressing the more complex solutions needed — for instance — to boost rural policing.
Some critics regard a close season as the thin end of a wedge designed to ban shooting altogether; but Scotland and most European countries observe these restrictions while other shooting practices continue. Others suggest that since hares are more abundant in some areas than others, controlling their numbers is necessary. But a close season would permit exceptions under licence in cases where it is necessary to prevent crop damage. The laws that regulate the shooting of hares in England and Wales date back to the 1800s, when there was an estimated population of 4mn animals. Today, there are fewer than 600,000 hares in the country.
The brown hare is a UK BAP (Biodiversity Action Plan) Priority Species, and more recently, an Indicator Species under the 2021 Environment Act, which has set legally binding biodiversity targets to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030 and reverse declines by 2042. An estimated 80 per cent reduction of the brown hare’s population since 1880 — largely as a result of modern intensive farming practices as well as coursing, disease and shooting — should ring alarm bells. A close season would provide basic protection for hares while meeting the government’s commitments.
As humans, we are very good at justifying exceptions where it suits our interests. But it is time to end this anomaly in our wildlife laws. I hope that the planets may finally be aligning. The Labour government has indicated that it supports a close season in principle, and a broad coalition is now calling on them to act.
Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley, Chris Packham, Antony Beevor, William Hague, Robert Macfarlane, Philip Pullman and Isabella Tree have all signed the open letter, along with some of the country’s foremost experts on hares and conservation, such as veterinarian and animal welfare scientist Andy Butterworth and Natural England senior mammal specialist Nancy Jennings, as well as the Born Free Foundation, Humane World for Animals and the Naturewatch Foundation. A parallel public petition has already attracted nearly 30,000 signatures.
I would love more people to have the chance of seeing hares in the wild. To ensure that long into the future, we should give them the same consideration as other game species. It is the very least we should do for a fascinating, graceful and much-misunderstood wild cousin.
Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.
“Raising Hare” by Chloe Dalton (Canongate, £10.99)
Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram