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Wildlife: Breeding Like Rabbits
Instead of going down the rabbit hole, this young bunny popped out, startling a graduate student monitoring an endangered population of pygmy rabbits.
The June sighting confirmed that the experimental effort to restore the tiny rabbits to their native turf in Washington was working: Despite a rough start, they were breeding. “With so few animals released, and so many natural odds to overcome, the birth of animals in the wild was unexpected,” says David Hays, a biologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Last March, the agency released 20 captive-bred Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits into artificial burrows at a remote site in east-central Washington, hoping they would repopulate their native habitat. Within a month, 14 rabbits had died, the victims of coyotes, badgers, hawks and owls. Only one female and one male—labeled the Adam and Eve of the wild population—remained.
Officials hope to release more of these rabbits, federally protected since 2003, in another site this fall or spring. “We are evaluating a range of options for improving their transition into the wild next time,” says Hays.
