The UK was the first nation to introduce a law protecting animals, the 1822 Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle, adopted two centuries ago. According to the RSPCA, our country today has some of the most progressive animal welfare legislation in the world. So it might be a surprise to learn that a Victorian law still permits cruelty towards hares in England and Wales, an anomaly in our wildlife laws that ought to be corrected.
It is a basic principle of game and wildlife conservation, as set out by Natural England, that wild animals should be protected while they are breeding, to avoid the killing of pregnant mothers and the orphaning of dependent young. For this reason, deer, pheasants and grouse – for instance – cannot be shot during their peak breeding months under a statutory close season for each species. But, in England and Wales, hares are excluded from this protection. Under the Ground Game Act of 1880, they can be shot at any time of year.
While there’s nominal protection from the Hares Preservation Act of 1892, which prohibits the sale of hares in the short period from March to July, the fact that most hare shoots take place in February and March shows this nineteenth-century law has little impact in modern times.
Every signature on the petition makes a difference
An estimated 300,000 hares are shot in England and Wales each year. Hares commonly breed from early February through to the end of September, so during February shoots female hares can already be pregnant or nursing dependent young. For the first four weeks of their lives, leverets are entirely dependent on their mothers for survival. If they are orphaned during this period, infant hares will likely starve to death.
This is a clear-cut animal welfare issue, depriving hares of a protection that is considered mandatory for other game animals and that Scotland and Northern Ireland (as well as most of Europe) have already implemented.
Successive UK governments have acknowledged that hares should be given the protection of a close season during their peak breeding season. But they have failed to turn this commitment into law, even though hares have been classed as a threatened and “priority species” under the UK’s Biodiversity Action Plan since 1994 – and despite the dramatic decline of the national hare population over the last century.
In the 1880s, when the Ground Game Act was introduced, there may have been as many as four million brown hares across the UK. There are now believed to be fewer than 600,000. Government targets to double the spring numbers of hares in Britain by 2010 were never achieved, and a voluntary code of practice introduced by the shooting industry in 2013 has failed to prevent shoots from taking place in the breeding season.
In Parliament, new attempts are being made to bring in protection for hares, including an Early Day Motion in the Commons and a Private Members’ Bill in the Lords, to introduce a close season for brown hares in England and Wales from the beginning of February to the end of September inclusive.
An open letter to the Prime Minister has attracted the support of conservation organisations, mammal experts, scientists, veterinarians, members of the shooting community, historians, writers and artists, while a public petition has already attracted over 30,000 signatures – although many more are needed to prompt a debate in Parliament.
When the petition passed its first 10,000 signatures, the government responded, saying that a close season is “under consideration” and that it would look for “suitable opportunities” to try to bring it about. Readers will recognise the acres of wiggle room created by this language. Despite the good intentions of some ministers, there is every risk that this government, like those before it, will be tempted to kick this commitment into the long grass, treating hares – again – as unimportant.
Every signature on the petition and every letter sent to Members of Parliament therefore makes a difference. If you are interested in helping, as I hope you might be, the Born Free Foundation website gives guidance.
Hares are exceptional creatures. WB Yeats wrote, in “The Wanderings of Oisin” (1889):
“The hare grows old as she plays in the sun
And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;
Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done
She limps along in an aged whiteness.”
The threats faced by hares today mean that few live long enough to age in the way Yeats imagined. A recent study of brown hares in Europe found that less than a quarter of all leverets survive the first weeks of life, due to predation, climate change and agricultural practices. Few people can now see what John Clare described in “Hares at Play” (1820):
“The timid hares throw daylight fears away
On the lane’s road to dust and dance and play.”
The least we can do is to give hares the minimum protection of a close season. Its current absence from the statute books is an inexcusable case of double standards and one – I dare imagine – that the Victorians themselves, were they alive to see it, might wish to see corrected.
Please sign the petition at Petition.Parliament.UK
Chloe Dalton is an author and foreign policy advisor. She spent over a decade working in the UK Parliament and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Her debut book “Raising Hare” was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller and short-listed for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025
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It is criminal that hates can still be slaughtered during their breeding season please stop this obscene practise