Mountain hare changing its coat. If climate change causes snow to melt ever earlier in the year, hares will more frequently find themselves wearing a ’wrong-coloured’ coat, making them easy prey for predators. Photo: Rolf Giger.
A warming climate will shrink and fragment mountain hare habitat in the Swiss Alps. Populations are likely to decline as a result, concludes an international study led by the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL). Specialised species like the mountain hare, adapted to life at high altitudes, are particularly affected by climate change. If temperatures become too warm for the mountain hare, it only has limited options to move to cooler, higher elevations. In fact, the area of suitable mountain hare habitat in Switzerland is expected to shrink by an average of one third by the year 2100. This is the conclusion of a study by the the University of Bern, the WSL, and the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU). And that habitat will not only diminish in size, but also become more fragmented.
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