Ulster conservationists say 'let the hare sit'

On its way between ditches (a way clearly notched in the top of each bank), the hare freezes upright in the middle of the boreen, transfixed by the distant approach of man and dog.

Meg snuffles obliviously to more immediate scents at the roadside - truly a mercy, since her unstoppable, utterly futile, pursuit of the hare, trailing hysterical yelps, would stampede every sheep for fields around. I will the animal to unfreeze and vanish, which it shortly does.

Meg has never caught a hare and never will: you'd wonder why she bothers. But she might have spotted the quarry if Irish hares turned white in winter, which they almost never do. In the Scottish mountains and in the European Alps, the autumn coat of Lepus timidus is replaced by a snowy pelt that leaves only the nose and the tips of the ears dark brown. Lepus timidus hibernicus is generally content with turning a bit grey.

The "hibernicus" tag makes it a sub-species. This acknowledges the animal's distinct winter coat, appropriate to its range across lowland fields as well as the mountains and uplands. But the differences may go a lot further. It is ancient as a native Irish animal: the oldest dated fossil goes back some 28,000 years. Its evolution under different ecological pressures may have shaped particular social habits and strategies of reproduction. And now, new genetic studies could even classify it as a full species on its own.

How much would it matter if its distinctiveness goes more than skin-deep? Quite a lot in practice, and not just to science. A "redescription" of the hare to give it full species status would earn it an even stronger claim to conservation and protection. When, last month, Northern Ireland's junior minister for the environment Angela Smith banned the killing or trapping of hares as a "temporary, precautionary measure", she may have been foreshadowing the animal's permanent, year-round protection in the island as a whole, much to the disgust of the coursing clubs.

The genetic research now under way in Queen's University, Belfast, is part of a new and intense focus on the hare's ecology and welfare. It springs from the discovery in the 1990s of a dramatic decline in hare numbers across the North and from a plan to double their population by 2010 in every place it can. This is sponsored by the North's Environment and Heritage Service, with the voluntary Ulster Wildlife Trust as lead partner.

The failing fortunes of the Ulster hares were first explored by Karina Dingerkus, a Queen's zoology student (from Mayo) who tramped across 150 one-kilometre squares on every kind of land from mountain moor to lowland pasture. She found the hare still widespread, but greatly reduced in number, especially in the rye-grass country of intensive agriculture. Her minimum estimate was of a mere 8,250 animals.

A follow-up survey carried out by Queen's scientists for the EHS and published in 2002 added an extra method of counting hares - "lamping" for them at night with spotlights aimed to pick up grazing animals. Out of a total of 239, they found 110 on the uplands of Antrim but only four in the fields of Tyrone. They estimated a hare population averaging one per square kilometre across the North.

Further study of the hare's biology and ecology - remarkably scanty both north and south, given how few native animals we have - is now a priority for Quercus, a new biodiversity research centre opened in Queen's in November with generous funding from the EHS (£1.2 million over three years) and further money from the Republic's National Parks and Wildlife Service (once Dúchas). In the same month, a reinvigorated Ulster Wildlife Trust held the first international conference on the hare, with 150 delegates.

The precise cause of the animal's northern decline is still uncertain, though some impacts are painfully clear. Farming changes have reduced the amount of cover the hare needs for protection from predators and the range of native herbs and grasses it needs in its diet. Its leverets are trampled by intensive stocking of cattle and minced up by silage mowers. In the uplands, the hares compete directly with grazing sheep.

Quite what the trapping ban will mean for the North's coursing is not clear, but a comment made in the Stormont Assembly in December, 2001, by a former Unionist minister for the environment seems relevant. Banning the capturing of hares would not prevent coursing, said Sam Foster, "Since the majority of hares used for coursing here are brought from outside Northern Ireland" - that is, from the Republic. How long this will continue may depend, at least in part, on whether Lepus timidus hibernicus becomes plain Lepus hibernicus instead.