Hare Management

Mountain hare leveret - note the tick on the right eyelid.

A controversial article recently appeared in the Sunday Herald which looked at mountain hares and their association with moorland management (entitled "Grouse moor owners driving mountain hares to the brink"). Aside from the provocative and misleading headline, the article touched on some useful issues which are well worth considering in a more balanced forum.

There is no question that we have a duty to protect our mountain hares, not only morally but under the terms of EU and International agreements. In the UK mountain hare densities are regularly ten times higher than in continental Europe and there has been no perceptible trend in numbers of hares in the UK bag since the 1950s when keepering re-started after the war.

Along with SNH and the James Hutton Institute, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust has drawn attention to the difficulties involved in counting and surveying hare populations. They are highly mobile, secretive and well camouflaged. Anecdotally, the very fact that we still commonly see tens of hares highly visible even in areas where the cull rates are high provides an indication of strong abundance.

Hare numbers fluctuate naturally for lots of reasons, including parasites, weather, predation and habitat quality. Fewer hares in an area can be natural; the perception that it's the impact of a malign hand of man may be understandable but incorrect. There is no doubt that management is why we see hares so much more frequently in Scotland than anywhere else in Europe. Indeed, it's likely that the more intensive the production of cover, young heather and predators reduction, the higher the hare density. 

Managing louping-ill disease risk is critical for moors. Without a strategy the investment that drives the management that produces Scotland's higher than average hare densities would decline. However, according to GWCT, the management catechism should be: 'deer before hares, hand-in-hand with dipped sheep'. Once that's in place, the critical management issue is that when hares are naturally declining moors should be careful to balance their disease risk management of hare populations. Certainly they should be consulting neighbours to make sure shooting and natural declines are not coupled across large, landscape areas. 

A really critical conservation issue is why hare numbers (derived from bag indices) appear to have declined so much in the south and west. Discouragement or abandonment of small ground game management in the last forty years seems the common factor, and at a fundamental level, the absence of hares is inextricably linked to an absence of key predators such as golden eagles in these areas. 

When conservation bodies are concerned about mountain hares in Scotland, the real issue is why we have lost such huge areas of mountain hare range during the Twentieth Century, particularly on the West Coast and throughout the Southern Uplands - an issue unquestionably linked to a range of factors from overgrazing to afforestation. Pointing a finger of blame at grouse moors is an oversimplification of an extremely complex conservation issue. 

Management and control programs in areas of high hare density may well attract popular disapproval, but the real drivers behind mountain hare decline in a national context are not straightforward.

The Heather Trust in Wales

"Radiator" cuts at Gors Maen Llwyd (Denbighshire) to increase "edge" habitat for grouse.

As part of our ongoing review into heather cutting as a form of moorland management, project assistant Patrick Laurie traveled south last week to see cutting work conducted on two moors in North Wales.

There has been little Heather Trust presence in Wales over the past two or three years, so it was great to have an excuse to head back down and renew old acquaintances.

The site at Moel Famau is well known to hillwalkers and outdoor enthusiasts from across North Wales and North West England, and the distinctive top represents the highest peak of the Clwydian Mountains, which run in a straight line from North to South almost on the border with England. The heather has been cut on Moel Famau for several years, and the mosaic pattern generated by the work is very impressive to see. The steep sides of the mountain preclude management, but most of the summit is easily accessible for a dual wheeled tractor and chain flail.

An important population of black grouse remains in the Clwydian Range, and much of this management is targeted at nurturing and conserving these last few birds. Features such as ponds and wet flushes have been artificially built-in to the site at Moel Famau, and these provide focal points for brood rearing habitats made up of cut heather at varying heights and ages, with access to mature blaeberry (V. myrtilis) to provide invertebrate forage for young birds.

The small lek site is carefully managed by cutting to ensure adjacent cover for prospecting greyhens, and the hill is managed with the needs of black grouse to the fore.

Further west on the Mynydd Hiraethog near Ruthin, more cutting management has made extensive changes to the structure of the vegetation. At Gors Maen Llwyd, the moor has been broken up with large cuts into heather that appears to grow extremely quickly, so that while it appears unmanageably tall, it actually responds very well to the chain flail. Gors Maen Llwyd is altogether wetter than Moel Famau, and some of the grassy flushes provide great habitat for black grouse. As if to prove this point, four birds rose up out of the heather in the sunshine.

It was interesting to see the "radiator" cuts which are designed for brood rearing in order to maximise the "edge" habitat between tall heather and short heather - this habitat dynamic is very important for game, and increasing the amount of "edge" available is useful for both red and black grouse.

There is a great deal of new and interesting work being done with heather cutting in Wales, and this feeds neatly into the current Heather Trust research project.

The Wildlife Trust for Wales' reserve at Gors Maen Llwyd