We launched our mountain hare care campaign in Aviemore this week. Here’s the inside story from Gregor, who has spent much of the week hopping around, drumming up support for greater protection for this iconic species.
Sitting in the car in a layby on the A9 heading North, my first day as a Giant Hare begins. Tens of thousands of Mountain Hare are shot every year, including in the Cairngorms National Park (a national park for goodness sake!), so we decided to do something about it…
We’ve got everything ready for the day: leaflets, a petition, and a massive fluffy hare costume. Now I just need to put it on and hope that wearing it in the August heat doesn’t turn out to be my undoing! It’s the start of the open season for mountain hare though – exactly the right time to make the public aware of just what is going on. Arriving at Aviemore, tourist capital of the Cairngorms National Park, with my OneKind handlers, the campaign begins.
The public care – they hugged the hare!
We wanted as many people as possible to show they care by hugging a Hare, and they did! I could actually get used to being a Hare, you get free hugs all day! If only we treated the real Mountain Hare with as much love. We went round all the businesses and explained what was going on. Most of them were happy to leave our leaflets on display, so now it’s quite hard to shop in Aviemore without hearing about the culling, I even managed to hop into the local butcher shop, leave some leaflets and get out without being made into a casserole! The kids were loving it too, with squeals of delight every time I decided to hop about!
An ex-gamekeeper spoke to us about his experience of shooting Mountain Hare. In his heyday, he recalls, lines of people would walk along the moors, picking up the hare that had been shot. On each side of the line would be a tractor. As dead and dying hare were picked up and no more could be carried, their bodies would be thrown onto the back of the tractors. Over 2,000 were killed in one day, he recalled. These days this reformed character prefers to shoot them with his camera, along with our other beautiful native wildlife.
We had a great couple of days, speaking with loads of lovely residents and tourists who were clearly shocked to hear that mountain hares are being killed for sport and culled in the National Park. Some people assumed that they were being killed for conservation reasons, but hearing that they are Scotland’s only native hare and are being killed to keep red grouse numbers up so that they can be shot for sport, surprised and angered many of our new hare-hugging friends. They were more than willing to add their name to the call for an end to the killing. After the situation was explained to her, animal defender and all round good egg, Maria Hawkins, wanted to make a plea to all our followers on social media, “Please help to stop this barbaric practice!” And help you can:
- Sign our petition to the Scottish Government in support of protection for the mountain hare
- Campaign with us! I’ll be touring Scotland with volunteers to drum up support for the campaign over the next couple of months. Email me if you’d like to join in and help us gather signatures and raise awareness. I might even let you try the costume on…