MARC LETTAU Easter is over for another year. Once again, chocolate bunnies of all shapes and sizes were a hit on the shelves. Swiss supermarket giant Migros produced 6.8 million of them alone at its Delica factory in Buchs (canton of St Gallen). Country of the hare China may have its year of the hare (known as ‘year of the rabbit’ in English), but Switzerland is – or used to be – the country of the hare. In German-speaking Switzerland in particular, countless addresses are named after our long-eared friends. Hasenacker, Hasenberg, Hasenbühl, Hasenburg, Hasenfeld, Hasengaden, Hasenhalden, Hasenmoos, Hasenplatte, Hasensprung, Hasental, Hasenstrick, and Hasenwinkel, to name but a few. Hares in Switzerland – specifically brown hares – used to hop around all over the place – and were hunted in droves. Decline Hare used to be popular on the dinner plate. Hunters shot up to 75,000 brown hares in the years directly after the Second World War. “They used to be the number one hunting trophy,” says biologist Claudine Winter from the Biodiversity and Landscape Division of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). According to the latest hunting statistics for Switzerland, only around 1,500 brown hares are now shot each year. This is because hare numbers have plummeted – especially in the Central Plateau reSwitzerland’s unhappy bunnies In the Chinese zodiac, 2023 is the year of the rabbit (or hare). Chocolate bunnies are well-loved in Switzerland, but their natural counterparts in the wild are anything but happy bunnies. kilometre. On the other hand, the rise of the Easter bunny shows no sign of abating. On top of the millions of chocolate bunnies produced by Migros, rival Coop and all the other confectionery manufacturers produce millions more. According to the Association of Swiss Chocolate Manufacturers, Chocosuisse, around 16 million leave the conveyor belt every year in Switzerland – two per capita – and 5,000 tonnes of chocolate are consumed every Easter. You would be forgiven for thinking that chocolate bunnies go back a long way, but these treats were very rare until 1950. Hollow bunnies did not even exist – until chocolatiers invented and perfected them. It was only about 50 years ago that production kicked in with a vengeance – starting a steep upward trend inversely proportional to the dwindling numbers of brown hares in the wild. Admittedly, the brown hare monitoring survey is unable to provide accurate inMost people in Switzerland rarely ever see brown hares. Chocolate bunnies are much more common, to put it mildly. Photo iStock Higher, farther, faster, more beautiful? In search of somewhat unconventional Swiss records This edition: The brown hare and the chocolate bunny – a tale of extremes gion. The Swiss brown hare monitoring survey, conducted since 1991 and covering selected areas of the country, illustrates how dramatic the situation has become. It is an exclusively downward trend, with the number of brown hares having halved again in the last three decades from an already low level to a very low level. Switzerland is currently home to an average of 2.5 brown hares per square Swiss Review / May 2023 / No.3 14 Report
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYwNzMx