Two Warwickshire nature reserves are to join the fight to save the UK's brown hare population.
The numbers of brown hares, famed for their mating season boxing routines, have experienced a significant decline in the last 40 years.
Draycote Meadows and Brandon Marsh nature reserves will join seven other sites across the country in a bid to save the species from disappearing from the British countryside.
The pair have launched a project to double the number of brown hares by 2010, and have even appointed a brown hare officer.
Bernie Higgins, the Coventry-based brown hare officer, said: "The loss of suitable habitat has been one of the key causes of decline in brown hare numbers throughout the UK.
" This project aims to develop habitat management plans for each study site, promote awareness of brown hare ecology and good land practice that will benefit the brown hare and enable the delivery of the UK of doubling the population by 2010."
The Warwickshire Wildlife Trust has joined other environmental groups to launch the project, and Biffa Waste services have donated grants totalling more than £50,000 to the fund.
Martin Bettington, chairman of Biffaward, said: " Biffaward is delighted to enable the project to extend into Warwickshire. Hopefully this project will be able to expand across the country and greatly contribute to significantly increasing brown hare numbers."
