A hare (leveret—baby)
Hare is one of the words deleted from the Oxford Junior dictionary because they didn't use the word often enough. But it was restored in Robert Macfarlane's book The Lost Words: A Spell Book
This is the image that accompanies that dictionary entry.
Macfarlane defines the hare not with a traditional dictionary entry but with an acrostic "spell-poem" and accompanying artwork by Jackie Morris. The book's purpose is to celebrate and conjure back natural words removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary.
The poem for "Hare" is an imaginative piece of writing meant to be read aloud, bringing the creature back into memory and imagination. The text for the hare spell reads:
Hurry-along, skip-and-run,
All across the land.
Race-the-wind and dew-hopper,
Elegant and grand.
A Hare (leveret)
The "definition" of the hare is woven into the text, highlighting its key characteristics through poetic language rather than clinical description.
The verse emphasizes the hare's most famous traits: speed ("Hurry-along," "Race-the-wind") and its leaping, bounding movement ("skip-and-run," "dew-hopper").
The acrostic format, where the first letter of each line spells out the word "HARE," serves as the book's magical "spell" for summoning the creature back to mind.
Macfarlane also draws on old folk names and traditional associations for the hare, including "stubble-stag," "hedge-springer," and "dew-hopper" to evoke its mystery and wildness.
The spell is paired with Jackie Morris's stunning watercolor paintings, which provide the visual "re-wilding" of the creature for the reader. The full definition is thus a combination of image, sound, and text working together to evoke the hare's essence.
Hares
The European hare, also known as the brown hare, is native to Europe and parts of Asia. It is among the largest hare species and is adapted to temperate, open country.
Hares are herbivorous and feed mainly on grasses and herbs, supplementing these with twigs, buds, bark and field crops, particularly in winter. Their natural predators include large birds of prey, dogs, wolves, cats, coyotes. They rely on high-speed endurance running to escape predation, having long, powerful limbs and large nostrils.
Generally nocturnal and shy, hares change their behavior in the spring, when they can be seen in broad daylight chasing one another around in fields. During this spring frenzy, they sometimes strike one another with their paws ("boxing"). This is not just competition between males, but also a female hitting a male, either to show she is not yet ready to mate or to test his determination.
Hares
The female nests in a depression on the surface of the ground rather than in a burrow and the young are active as soon as they are born. Litters may consist of three or four young and a female can bear three litters a year, with hares living for up to twelve years.
The European hare is listed as being of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature because it has a wide range and is moderately abundant. However, populations have been declining in mainland Europe since the 1960s, at least partly due to changes in farming practices.
The hare has been hunted across Europe for centuries, with more than five million being shot each year; in Britain, it has traditionally been hunted by beagling and hare coursing, but these field sports are now illegal. The hare has been a traditional symbol of fertility and reproduction in some cultures and its courtship behavior in the spring inspired the English idiom mad as a March hare..
Hares
Belgian hare is a "fancy," (primarily for exhibition, not meat, fur or fiber) breed of domestic rabbit. It has been selectively bred to resemble the wild European hare, but nevertheless, it is a rabbit rather than a true hare.
Hares
The hispid hare has a harsh and bristly fur coat, dark brown on the back due to a mixture of black and brown hairs; brown on the chest and whitish on the abdomen.
Today, its distribution is limited to northern India, southern Nepal, and eastern Bhutan.
The hispid and red rock hare are actually rabbits.
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Animal Stories: re-wilding
In the mid-20th century, the blue wildebeest population was decimated to just 300,000 individuals because of viruses spread from livestock. Ground vegetation began to overpopulate which eventually led to wildfires that destroyed 80% of the ecosystem annually. This led to a net release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making the Serengeti a producer of greenhouse gases. When disease management efforts helped the wildebeest population recover back to their historic levels of over 1.5 million, the landscape was brought back into balance and restored to being a natural storage unit for CO2 in less than a decade.
Today, the blue wildebeest population is stable and considered of least concern by The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Along with the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park, the rewilding of wildebeests in the Serengeti is considered one of the most successful rewilding stories of our time. Rewilding efforts can not only save species and restore habitats; it is also an essential solution in the fight against the climate crisis.
Animal Stories: re-wilding
Grey wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Scientists hail this as one of the greatest rewilding efforts in modern history.
Yellowstone National Park is a prime example of the crucial role that wolves play in ecosystems. In 1926, the last wolf pack in Yellowstone was eliminated by park employees as part of a policy to eradicate all predators, leading to an imbalance in the entire ecosystem.
Elk populations surged, resulting in the overgrazing of willows and aspens. This loss of trees led to a decline in songbirds and the inability of beavers to build dams due to eroding riverbanks. Water temperatures also rose, which impacted cold-water fish.
In 1995, just 14 wolves were rewilded in Yellowstone, and their impact was immediate. Balanced deer and elk populations allowed overgrazed areas to recover, trees rebounded, riverbanks stabilized, and birds returned, along with other wildlife such as beavers, eagles, foxes, and badgers.
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/wolves-yellowstone/
Animal Stories: re-wilding
Reintroduced wolves are helping baby aspen trees flourish in northern Yellowstone for the first time in 80 years, Smithsonian Magazine
The apex predators, restored to the park in 1995, appear to be keeping the local population of plant-eating elk in check, which allows aspen saplings to grow tall and healthy.
Animal Stories: re-wilding
BUT (YaleEnvironment360)
As Wolf Populations Rebound, an Angry Backlash Intensifies
The reintroduction of endangered wolves to Yellowstone National Park 30 years ago was a major conservation victory. But as wolves have spread across the West, anger and resentment at the apex predator has escalated, with hunters in some states increasingly targeting them.
As wolves expand their territory, resistance to restoration efforts is growing more widespread and more fierce. A similar backlash is occurring in Europe, where EU wildlife policies led to a wolf comeback, followed by massive retaliation as the animals behaved as apex predators do.
In the United States, the assault on wolves has ramped up in several northern Rockies states where restrictions have been lifted: Hunters and ranchers are shooting and trapping wolves legally, running them over with high-powered snowmobiles, slaughtering pups in their dens, and pursuing their prey after dark using night goggles, a practice considered unethical by the hunting community. Advocates for wolf protection are still fighting to restore the species, but as the wolf expands its territory, resistance to such efforts — or to any restoration of protections — is growing more widespread and more fierce.
Animal Stories: re-wilding
Wolves are no longer federally protected in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and in a small section of northern Utah. The 4,000 or so wolves that occupy Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan have federal protections, as do wolves in California, western Washington, western Oregon, Arizona, and New Mexico.
The desire to kill wolves has also given way to what some — including Ed Bangs, a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist — consider a violation of the “fair chase” ethics of hunting. Wolves are being killed on private land by people with night vision and thermal imaging equipment. They are lured by bait and then shot, and both Montana and Idaho offer bounties for dead wolves — $2,000 in Idaho.
Animal Stories: re-wilding
Plains bison in the American Prairie
Historically, estimates suggest that between 25 and 60 million plains bison once roamed the American prairies. However, in the 19th century, settlers and hunters nearly drove them to extinction. The last wild bison population, about two dozen individuals, was only found in Yellowstone National Park.
Animal Stories: re-wilding
Through their immense diet of grasses, bison kept the Great Plains ecosystem functioning, helping cultivate more vegetation and creating habitats for other keystone species like black-tailed prairie dogs, which serve as food for predators.
Droughts are also prone to this region, and the bison wallows create pools of water that many animals use as their primary drinking source.
Thus, in 2012, a coalition of biologists and conservationists set about to recover the plains bison. Via breeding programs, the population grew to almost 5,000. The reintroduction of bison was so successful that their impact on the landscape could be seen from space.
Animal Stories: re-wilding
Sea otters—guardians of kelp forests
One of the most adored species on our planet, sea otters act as guardians of underwater kelp forests. Kelp forests are one the most efficient absorbers of CO2, using carbon from the atmosphere to grow leafy structures below the surface. Yet, these forests are particularly delicious if you are a sea urchin. If left unchecked, these small, spiky marine animals multiply rapidly, sweeping across the ocean floor and devouring entire stands of kelp. As keystone predators, sea otters keep these urchin populations in check.
A study found that kelp forests guarded by sea otters can absorb 12 times more carbon dioxide than those without. Sea otters provide an estimated carbon capture value of $200-400 million annually.
Animal Stories: re-wilding
Whales—deep sea climate solutions
As Earth’s largest mammal, whales absorb an average of 33 tons of carbon each throughout their lifetimes. When they die, their carcasses fall to the bottom of the ocean and remain there for centuries, keeping that stored carbon out of the atmosphere.
Even their excrement goes to work! Whale droppings act as a fertilizer for phytoplankton, which pulls ten gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere into the deep ocean each year.
Unfortunately, whale populations have dramatically declined due to pollution and hunting. If whale populations were allowed to return to around 4-5 million, a massive 1.7 billion tons of carbon could be captured each year.
Animate the Carbon Cycle: Scientists call for a decade of rewilding
A high-level group of 60 scientists, economists, and experts have launched an initiative, supported by One Earth, to establish the technical potential of ecosystem restoration and rewilding to help in rebalancing the global climate system. Titled Animate the Carbon Cycle: Supercharging ecosystem carbon sinks to meet the 1.5°C target (ACC), the collaborative research effort builds upon recent research demonstrating that healthy populations of wild animal, plant, and fungal species play an essential role in regulating the global carbon cycle.
“Restoring, rewilding, and conserving the functional role of vertebrate and invertebrate species can be a game-changer by magnifying carbon uptake by 1.5 to 12.5 times (in some cases more) across the world’s terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems.” — Oswald Schmitz, Yale School for the Environment
Animate the Carbon Cycle: Scientists call for a decade of rewilding
Numerous case studies have shown that certain animal species can “supercharge ecosystem carbon sinks” through trophic cascades, seed dispersal, soil fertilization, and other mechanisms. For example, the restored wildebeest population in the Serengeti has almost completely prevented wildfires, and its rejuvenated grasslands now capture carbon equivalent to annual human-caused CO2 emissions of Kenya and Tanzania combined.
By protecting wolf populations across North American, an amount of carbon was captured equivalent to 10% of the USA’s CO2 emissions.
By restoring the forest elephant population in the Congo Basin to historic levels, an amount of carbon equivalent to France’s annual CO2 emissions could be stored.
The potential for restored wildlife populations in the ocean to help stabilize the climate is also very large and has not been fully quantified. If we restore whale populations to their estimated pre-historic population levels, the annual emissions of Russia could be captured.
Animate the Carbon Cycle: Scientists call for a decade of rewilding
And although global fish stocks are severely overexploited, they still capture an amount of carbon equivalent to twice the CO2 emissions of the EU-27. By rebuilding the world’s severely depleted fish populations through expanded marine protected areas, oceans could increase their carbon storage potential.
It is estimated that approximately 150 GtC in carbon removal will be required this century, alongside a rapid phaseout of fossil fuel emissions, in order to maintain a good chance of limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5°C. Above 1.5°C, ecosystems critical for our survival could hit climate “tipping points,” resulting in rapid ecological decline.
To avoid tipping points, governments must deploy nature restoration at scale. Recent research shows a carbon removal potential of 100 GtC through reforestation and forest restoration, 15 GtC through coastal restoration, and 10 GtC through grasslands restoration. But this is still short of what is needed. Rewilding, or the reintroduction of keystone species within protected areas, has the potential to increase total carbon sequestration potential to 150 GtC or more.
Animate the Carbon Cycle: Scientists call for a decade of rewilding
Over the next year, this new initiative will document the scientific, economic, and practical potential of animating the carbon cycle, as well as field methodology, financial, legal, and policy solutions for implementation. The consortium of organizations is led by the Global Rewilding Alliance (GRA), Yale School of the Environment, Re:wild, GRID-Arendal, Rewilding Argentina, the IUCN Wilderness Specialist Group and The WILD Foundation, with input from a diverse group of expert scientists, economists, policymakers, and practitioners.
Rewilding is an extremely cost-efficient solution that allows nature, climate, and people to prosper. It can also offer sustainable funding sources for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities who steward many of these intact areas. Animating the Carbon Cycle is the critical, missing link between biodiversity and climate change.
Next week
Discussion of Raising Hare