The changing status of the Brown hare (Lepus capensis L.) in Britain.

Abstract

Game bag records are used to examine temporal and geographical changes in numbers of Brown hares. Records are taken from a survey made by the Oxford Bureau of Animal Population in 1938, which covered over 400 estates, and from the Game Conservancy's National Game Census, which has been monitoring shooting records of between 400 and 500 estates since 1961. Eastern regions of Britain had higher bags of hares than western regions in the three periods; 1891–1910, 1917–1936, 1961–1978. Hare game bags were generally high in counties with large proportions of tilled land. There was no consistent temporal trend in bags from different areas before 1938, but all areas show a considerable reduction in bags since 1961. This reduction is statistically significant. Time-series analysis of one extended set of data did not show evidence of cyclic fluctuations.