Advice
Our advisory guides are available as PDF downloads for easy offline reading.
Hares damage crops and sometimes this can be severe, especially in horticulture. Farmers need the right to control hare numbers in these circumstances.
Certainly – many of the options available within the Environmental Stewardship schemes are suitable for encouraging brown hares.
This can be done, but in most cases it is not a good idea. Hares are difficult to capture and handle and many don’t survive after release. If there are already some hares present, however few, it is always better to improve their chances of survival and breeding rather than rely on imported animals. Only where hares are entirely absent should restocking be considered and, even then, one must be confident that habitat and other environmental conditions are suitable for them.