SNOWSHOE HARE AND CLIMATE CHANGE

SNOWSHOE HARE

Snowshoe hares molt from brown to white and back to brown each year in order to blend in the surrounding when season changes. The transition does not happen overnight; snowshoe hares stay a mix of brown and white for a period of time until their fur color transfers completely. This period of transition is extremely dangerous for them since they become easy targets of their predators. And climate change further increases their danger. As the climate change raises global temperature drastically, winter comes later and later and snow melts earlier and earlier each year. Therefore, more snowshoe hares find a hard time adapting themselves to the constantly changing environment. Some snowshoe hares stand out from their environment since their fur color is still in transition. The mismatch of fur colors and surrounding environments makes make them easy targets of predators, thus causing the population of snowshoe hares to decline. In contrast with human beings who are highly adaptable to rising in temperatures, small animals like snowshoe hares might confront much difficulty due to this seemingly small change in temperature.

In order to know how serious the effect of climate change on snowshoe hares is, a research was conducted by the North Carolina State University. They put radio collars on 186 snowshoe hares at two sites in Montana for three years in order to calculate the danger of mismatch between fur color and the surrounding of snowshoe hares. The research indicated that the survival rate of snowshoe hares dropped from 96 percent to 92 percent when they have 60 percent of mismatch between fur color and background; this probability further dropped to 89 percent when fur color and background are completely mismatched. For now, this might not seem as a big issue since each snowshoe hare experiences mismatch less than a week on average. However, the question is: what will happen to the fate of these snowshoe hares in the future? Would they be able to adapt themselves as quick as climate change? If we human do nothing to mitigate climate change, winter will continue to arrive later each year and snow will continue to melt earlier each year. The research claimed, by 2100, snowshoe hares might experience as much as eight weeks of mismatch, which could be deadly to them.