Climate change and the snowshoe hare

I’ve

noticed a stereotype lately that suggests only young people believe in climate change. In my experience, that is pure BS.

I am on the high side of middle-age. That means I spend a lot of time speaking to older people so I can still be referred to as “the young feller.” As a result, I have discovered the older you are, the more you accept climate change.

Every older person has stories about how kids these days don’t know what a real winter is. People in the older demographic remember snowbanks so high you couldn’t see your house from the road, and they look at what passes for winter these days as evidence something has changed.

Talk to the younger generation about climate change, however, and you will hear some real babble-talk. My four-yearold grandson, for instance, has no clue. He can only remember the past two winters, and they seem pretty much the same to him.

I love the kid but unless his generation gets a little more educated, I’m not holding out much hope for the future.

Regardless, climate change will affect us in many ways and none of them good. But, relatively speaking, we are the lucky ones. Imagine, if you were a varying (aka snowshoe) hare.

First, let’s acknowledge that these animals are on every land- and aerial-based predator’s list of healthy snacks.

But the one thing they had going for them was that their coat turned white in the winter. This superpower provides camouflage and a better than even chance of escaping from the clutches of anything that wants to eat them, including the human hunter.

But, as climate change reduces snow cover and shortens winter, these animals are going to have an issue. Eventually, if the trend continues, they will stick out like sore thumbs more often at the beginning and end of each winter.

This is not going to bode well for them as a species.

There’s nothing easier to spot on a snowless January landscape than a pure white snowshoe hare.

Eventually, if climate change persists, hunters are going to have to create the same sort of conservation effort as the nesting box projects that saved the wood duck. I have given this a lot of thought and believe that the best way to do it would be a twofold approach. The first part is to give them a place to hide in plain sight. The second part would be to reduce their predators so they could thrive.

I envision a simple project where conservationist hunters would go into snowshoe hare habitat and spray paint every hare-sized rock and stump white. That way, a white hare could just sit still among these white inanimate objects and giggle as they watch predators break their teeth, claws and beaks biting down on hard white objects they mistook for a hare. This would also provide for plenty of hilarious social media videos too.

Eventually, predators would turn their efforts to something less fraught with risk – or perhaps go vegan.

This simple effort would definitely help varying hares at least until they could evolve coats that are more seasonally appropriate

If we don’t do something about this issue, they will eventually retreat farther north to where the snow sticks around a little longer. This would be a shame.

No hunter I know wants a receding hare-line.