hare today, hare tomorrow

CTV News just did a science piece on Snowshoe Hares in the Yukon, titled: Dan Riskin on why hares aren't changing colour fast enough. Riskin is their News’ Science and Technology Specialist, holds a PHD in Zoology, and is a Biology Professor at the University of Toronto.

Riskin’s video discusses the plight of Snowshoe Hares according to the findings of a 2022 study by Oli et al, written up in a Phys.Org piece: Timing of snowshoe hare winter color swap may leave them exposed in changing climate, study finds. From the Oli paper, Riskin says that Yukon winters are warming by 1.0 C every 13 years which is causing later and less snow coverage, and as a result the hares can’t moult into their white fur in sync with the delayed winter onset.

The Professor sums up that the impact of this not only affects the hares, but also their predators: So the way hares adapt to climate change will matter for the ecosystem as a whole.
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​First, the Snowshoe Hare’s endangered status is classified as least concern. Second, climate in south-western Yukon has not been getting warmer, at least during October/November when the moulting process begins:

As the trend lines show, while mean temperatures in late fall may vary from year-to-year, they are essentially the same now as they were 80 years ago. The arrival of cold weather fluctuates throughout the entire record, so hares had the same moult-timing problem even back in the ‘40s.
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What about snow coverage?

The graph represents the dates that snow first covered the ground for the rest of the winter, going back to 1955 when this weather aspect was first recorded by Environment Canada. It shows a trend towards earlier, not later coverage, as the Riskin-endorsed study wrongly alleges. Today snow covers the ground, and stays through the winter, starting about a week earlier than it did in the 1950s.

CTV viewers put a lot of faith in reports by Professor Riskin and should expect that he would check for other scientific information that may conflict with the findings he enlightens us with. However, he has missed a countering study that was featured by the same Phys.Org titled: Snowshoe hares with mismatched coats due to global warming are faring better than ever.

That article discusses a similar (2021 Kennagh et al) Yukon hare study: They were able to verify that the hares went through periods of mismatched coats each spring and fall and found that they thrived instead of falling to predators. Their data showed the mortality risk for the hares during the autumn months was reduced by approximately 86.5%, likely because they foraged between 17 to 77 minutes less during the autumn changeover.

A pretty big miss. Despite a believable and sobering analysis from the CTV expert, it would appear that the hares are doing just fine … Climate Change or no Climate Change.

Again, the media and their biased scientific authorities lead the average person astray, such that bunnies are now on everyone’s list of cute animals assaulted by the evils of human CO2 emissions. Polar Bears move over, because like you the Snowshoe Hares aren’t going anywhere.
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