Thread: Weird hare behaviour

Hares are an evocative creature that create very mixed emotions as we can see in this thread. Mostly harmless for the average pastoralist, they are however a terrible nuisance if you are in the business of planting shrubs, scrub, trees, riparian stuff.

Our valley and one of the nearby ones have had some major riparian regeneration work, awarding winning stuff. Pulling out all the invasive species and planting natives. The difference to the drainage water quality is amazing, bird life, general vibe all round improved.

Problem is the hares just love to nibble on freshly planted seedling trees. You can kiss thousands of bucks worth of trees goodbye if you’ve got a hate problem. We were away for 6 years, in that time the hare population went through the roof. Dozens of them all over the paddocks. The new owners over the way were suffering heaps of riparian plant species damage and didn’t initially know why. So we turned up and said ah ha, nice to meet you and I know exactly what your problem is... So we lowered the hare population dramatically and hey presto the plant survival rate picked up immediately, to the all-round benefit of the environment as a whole.

Problem with hares is other than cats, they don’t have any predators here that can keep the balance, unlike their natural environments in Europe where they are predated extensively by foxes, raptors, lynx etc. This is a large reason why we see hares so freely in the daytime whereas in other parts of the world they are much more inclined to mostly nocturnal behaviour.