Hunt supporters present cheque to Air...
The Bicester and Whaddon Chasers Supporters' Club donated £1,000 to Thames Valley Air Ambulance...
about this blogRead moreThe first principle of any legislation is that it must solve a problem. Too often proposals for animal welfare and environmental protection laws fail at that first step. For years a succession of parliamentarians have promoted a bill to create a closed season for hares which has again raised its head in the House of Lords. They argue interchangeably that such a law would increase the hare population and/or protect the welfare of hares. At a superficial level it might seem straightforward that protection equals benefit, but it does not take much digging to start to question whether there is actually any problem this proposal would solve.
Hares are culled in relatively few parts of the country where the population thrives to such an extent that hares cause serious damage to growing crops and woodland. These tend to be in the East of England and the majority of culling takes place in February. There is already a law which creates a de facto close season as it is illegal to sell a hare after 1 March. Hares are sought after on the continent, in particular, and get a good price from game dealers so it would be stupid to carry out a planned cull after that date.
Over the years I have talked to a series of politicians who have proposed a close season starting on 1 February and not one has been able to evidence the problem that this law would apparently resolve. A very small number of leverets are born in February, as they are in every month through the winter, but with overall leveret mortality running at over 75% the chances of many of these surviving are minimal. The idea that such a close season would have any impact on the hare population as a whole is, frankly, far-fetched.
Those who are culling hares are doing so because the population is so large. It is in the rest of the country where hares are not regularly shot that the population needs to grow. Here the real issues facing hares are habitat, poaching and farming practices. As I explained to one Cornish MP, the reason he had very few hares in his constituency was not because anyone was shooting them (at any time of year), but in large part because farmers had moved from cutting hay once a year in late summer to cutting silage three or four times a year from the spring.
I will cede to no-one in my love for the hare. They are quite extraordinary animals and have been celebrated throughout history. Whilst not indigenous to the UK (they were probably introduced by the Romans) they have become an intrinsic part of the British countryside. The Alliance was instrumental in promoting amendments to the Game Acts in the last parliament which have assisted prosecution of hare poachers and which has had a practical positive impact. We see no evidence that a close season would have any such benefits for the hare population, and indeed there is a risk that more hares would be culled if farmers were concerned that they could not manage them during a closed season. The proposal for a closed season seems to be based far more on an emotional response than any practical benefit. The effort involved would be better focused on solving the actual problems that mean hares are absent from too many parts of the countryside.
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