LONDON: A new study finds that deer numbers are booming across the countryside, while rabbit, fox and hare are all in steep decline. Britain’s deer populations are booming, but rabbit, hare and fox numbers are all falling, a new study has found. The research shows that numbers of one species of deer have almost tripled in size in just under two decades, while others have almost doubled.
However, over the same period, rabbit numbers have dropped by 48 per cent, mountain hares by 43 per cent and fox by 20 per cent. The figures come from the only study of its kind, which gauges the nationwide fortunes of the most commonly seen mammals found in the wild in Britain.
The results show vastly differing fortunes for the nine species across the countryside. The research, published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research, has involved annual monitoring of 1,000 square miles (2,600 square kilometres) over the past 18 years. Each year, volunteers survey the same square kilometre, picked at random from a map, over two days during the spring and early summer, and record every creature they encounter.–Telegraph