WildCare News
Brown hares boxing clever – thanks to wildlife-friendly farmers
It is not a case of ‘hare today, gone tomorrow’ as sightings of these mad March movers have bounced by more than a third on wildlife-friendly farms.
Figures released today by WildCare, the farm wildlife habitat scheme, reveal brown hare numbers have increased by 35 per cent on participating farms. The data, collated from two independent audits of each farm per year, involves detailed field measurements and recordings of sightings. WildCare assessors recorded sightings of 225 brown hares across the Waitrose Select Farm pool, compared with 167 during the first round.
The WildCare scheme works with the 60 farmers in the Waitrose Select Farm dairy pool, helping them enhance wildlife habitat on their farms. All maintain wide field margins in arable fields, where the grass is allowed to grow long and provide shelter for resting adults and for young. Farmers leave areas of grass uncut and maintain hedgerows to provide good cover from predators, such as foxes. The natural regeneration of wild plants in spring and early summer provides an ideal habitat and food sources too.
Currently the farm with the biggest population is in Oxfordshire but farms in Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset and Hampshire are also strongholds. Smaller populations are also evident on pool farms in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire and Stirlingshire.
Waitrose pays these farmers a premium for their milk in return for maintaining high standards of milk quality and farming in a manner which benefits wildlife. This extra cost is not passed on to the consumer.
How farmers are backing the brown hare’s corner:
- They break up large blocks of cereal crops with grassland areas
- In arable fields, they keep wide field margins where the grass is allowed to grow long and provide shelter for resting adults and for young. Some leave grassy strips within the field too
- In grassland, they provide areas where the grass is allowed to grow long in which leverets can hide
- They leave stubble over winter to provide shelter
- When making silage, they cut the field from the centre outwards to give hares the best chance of escaping to neighbouring fields
John Cousins, head of agricultural policy for The Wildlife Trusts, said: “WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SAY? Something about the economy and how important to keep doing what doing for future generations…?”
Tim Oliver, business services manager, said: “Brown hares have been associated with farmland for thousands of years, as fields replicate their favourite natural environment. They do however need cover too and particularly young animals are not very smart around farm machinery. Buffer zones and naturalised field corners created under the WildCare scheme provide shelter out of harms way and once again the Waitrose Dairy Farmers have demonstrated that with a little thought and consideration, a lot of good can be done for wildlife even on the most efficient farms.”
The sight of brown hares ‘boxing’ in the countryside could have become a thing of the past as the species suffered a 75 per cent decline over the past 50 years. Concern about declining numbers led to a government UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP), which aims to raise the brown hare population to around two million by 2010 and, after several years of stable population, total numbers remain at about one and a quarter million. 23/02/2009
For further information please contact:
Anna Guthrie
Senior Press Officer - The Wildlife Trusts
Tel: 01636 670075
Email: aguthrie@wildlifetrusts.org
Amy Haywood
Communications Manager (Agriculture)
Tel: 01344 825026
Email: Amy_Hayward@waitrose.co.uk
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