3 days ago
The Government needs a new plan for stopping small boat crossings
SIR – Chloe Dalton's book, Raising Hare (Features, May 28), is undoubtedly a remarkable account of her relationship with an orphaned leveret, but her petition seeking a closed season for hares is unfortunately a distraction from better steps that can be taken to ensure the hare population flourishes.
The 80 per cent decline in UK hare numbers in the past century was most marked following the world wars, as game shooting and the number of gamekeepers dwindled; fortunately, while population density varies widely across the UK, it has been largely stable since the 1990s, and the hare remains a common animal. In some areas, mostly in the east, it is very numerous indeed, and needs regulation. Elsewhere, smaller populations are largely cherished.
Work by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust has identified the cornerstones to a thriving hare population – chiefly predator control and the provision of year-round food supply and shelter. Ensuring that government schemes continue to support the latter should be a far more pressing concern than a campaign for a close season, which may have the unintended consequence of encouraging pre-emptive culls where hare numbers might cause problems, removing the ability to address crop damage only as it arises.
Matthew Higgs
Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire
SIR – Chloe Dalton's account of raising a new-born leveret is heart-warming, but she is not alone in having done this. Gilbert White, in his Natural History of Selborne (1789), records an extraordinary example of inter-species nurturing.
A friend had 'a little helpless leveret' brought to him, which his servants began raising with spoonfuls of cow's milk. But it soon disappeared, and was assumed to have been 'killed by some cat or dog'. Not at all. At about the time of the leveret's disappearance, the same friend had 'dispatched' the latest litter of his pet cat, no doubt by drowning, and about a fortnight later, while sitting in his garden one evening, 'he observed the cat, with tail erect, trotting towards him, and calling with little short inward notes of complacency, such as they use towards their kittens, and something gamboling after, which proved to be the leveret that the cat had supported with her milk, and continued to support with great affection. Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and predaceous one!'
Hugh Keyte
London SE1
SIR – I heard Chloe Dalton's book read on BBC Radio 4, and enjoyed it with friends in my book group. I now have items in my home and garden displaying hares, and would support any charity protecting them. Thank you, Chloe, for Raising Hare.
Cathy Gooding
