UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Those tired clichés and puns just won't stop coming. When it is suggested that he is trying to pull a rabbit out of a … region, Duane Diefenbach just smiles ruefully, shaking his head. "They are not rabbits, they are hares -- snowshoe hares," he explains patiently. "In Pennsylvania, they exist only in parts of the Northern Tier, and this study will try to determine just where their populations persist."

The adjunct assistant professor of wildlife ecology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences doesn't think it's a "hare-brained" scheme to have researchers survey a 15,000-square-mile region of the sparsely populated, mostly forested northern counties, including the Poconos. They will be armed with hand-held computers and global positioning (GPS) units, looking for what researchers euphemistically refer to as "pellets" -- fecal matter.

Because the pellets "deposited" by snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) are indistinguishable from those left by Appalachian cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus obscurus) and eastern cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus americanus) that also thrive in the region, DNA testing will be used to determine where the hares are. The GPS units and computers will allow researchers to electronically mark locations of hare droppings and eventually to draw maps showing the range of the hares.

"It's kind of a crap shoot…" Diefenbach pauses, catching himself in yet another pun. "This method has not been tried before in Pennsylvania, but we are optimistic that this approach will allow us to determine the range of the snowshoe hare here. Our state is at the southern periphery of the snowshoe hare's range, and habitat use by this species is not well understood."

The research project -- intriguing because of its high-tech approach to a rather mundane activity -- is titled the "Distribution and Large-Scale Habitat Associations of Snowshoe Hares in Northern Pennsylvania." It is one of 15 approved for funding by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission to benefit the state's most troubled wildlife and fish species. Using monies allocated to the state from the federal State Wildlife Grant Program, the Game Commission is providing $80,000 of the $115,000 project cost, with the university supplying the remainder.

"The snowshoe hare is a species of interest to hunters and nonhunting wildlife enthusiasts," explains Diefenbach. "Although hunter harvest data by county provides a gross measure of hare range in Pennsylvania, hares likely are patchily distributed and associated with specific habitat types.

"Presently, hares are hunted in Pennsylvania, but a very conservative one-week season has been established because the effect of hunting on the population, as well as habitat requirements and trends in abundance, are unknown," he adds. "Greater hunting opportunities or habitat improvements might be implemented if more was known about the distribution and habitat requirements of hares in Pennsylvania."

Information yielded by the research might provide a foundation for developing a management plan or implementing habitat management for hares, according to Diefenbach. "Identifying the distribution and habitat requirements for hares will provide necessary information to make appropriate management decisions for harvest regulations, identify potential areas for conservation action and to protect and manage existing habitat," he says. "Because Pennsylvania is already on the periphery of the hare's range, range-wide changes in habitat conditions could result in the irreversible loss of this species in the commonwealth."

Cottontail rabbits and snowshoe hares are a lot alike, but there are some important differences. First and perhaps most obvious, snowshoe hares are adapted to living in northern climates where there is near-constant snow cover in winter. Subsequently, they have larger back feet to help them maneuver on shifting, slippery surfaces -- hence the name "snowshoe."

And hares' fur turns white in the winter to help them blend into their surroundings and avoid predators, which accounts for their other common name -- "varying hare."

"Another important difference between hares and rabbits is not so noticeable," notes Diefenbach. "The young of snowshoe hares emerge from their mother able to run, while cottontail rabbit babies are more or less helpless at first."

One final cliché about rabbits that is true for hares: They reproduce like, well… rabbits. "Hares are very productive, similar to rabbits in that respect," says Diefenbach. "A female hare might have three litters a year."

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EDITORS: Contact Duane Diefenbach by phone at 814-865-4511 or e-mail at DRD11@psu.edu.

Contact:

Gary Abdullah gxa2@psu.edu Jeff Mulhollem jjm29@psu.edu 814-863-2719 814-863-9877 fax #162