September 8, 2004
IN NH, ONLY THE DEER BREED LIKE RABBITS (via Robert Schwartz):
With Scraggly Habitat Disappearing, So Is a Rabbit (FELICITY BARRINGER, 9/01/04, NY Times)
Developers and farmers in the Northeast hoping to unload overgrown parcels of land may come to rue the day that John Litvaitis dropped his study of bears and took up with the New England cottontail.Mr. Litvaitis, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of New Hampshire, has conducted several studies suggesting that the rabbit's prospects for long-term survival are waning. As land covered with scraggly second-growth turns into subdivisions or even into forests without scrub for cover, the near-sighted cottontail is increasingly forced into the open, where it often sees predators too late to escape, he says.
Relying in large part on Mr. Litvaitis's research, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service is methodically moving toward designating the rabbit as an endangered or threatened species. With it would come a host of protections, mandatory field surveys and areas identified as critical habitats from southern Maine to western Connecticut.
Despite occasional headlines in local newspapers ("Bunny on the Brink," declared The Sunday Citizen of Dover and Laconia, N.H.), the potential listing and its economic implications have not yet sunk in, said Michael Amaral, a biologist with the wildlife agency. [...]
By Mr. Litvaitis's estimate - which he emphasizes is very rough, the rabbits being short-lived, multilittered and hard to spot - 2,500 New England cottontails are left in shrinking patches of their former range. "We've got them peppered through the landscape," he said, saying that their patchwork habitats were anywhere from an acre or 3 to 100 or more.
"We see one here, two there, five there," he added. "Then we have to go 20 miles to repeat the pattern. Long term, that's a matter of great concern. We've been hemming and hawing for a decade, and it's done nothing but decline. Hem and haw for another decade, and we're talking about very large declines."
But Mr. Litvaitis is not sure that people will get worked up over the cottontail.
If it'll slow development--now that a forest was ripped out to build our house--go ahead and protect them. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 8, 2004 11:44 PM
I'm on board pull up the ladder.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 8, 2004 11:50 PMYew, a preservationist is one who built his house *last* year.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at September 9, 2004 6:07 AM*sigh* Yew = Yes.
Something similar is at work here in metro Atlanta. Several nearby horse farms have been torn down to enable construction of townhomes, strip malls, etc. Ugly. One solution bandied about is to move further north where the bucolic splendor is uninterrupted. Hey wait a minute - where are we going to get the land to build homes there?
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at September 9, 2004 6:12 AMI live in a 70s-vintage subdivision. Based on purely anecdotal evidence, I'd say it's a fine habitat for the eastern cottontail. Every night, the local bunny family is in my yard, eating the rosebushes.
Posted by: Mike Morley at September 9, 2004 6:31 AMMike - In New Hampshire, "rosebush" is coyote for "bait."
Posted by: pj at September 9, 2004 7:25 AMDon't worry OJ, the armadillos are on the way. You'll have plenty of "wildlife". (slippery highways also)
Posted by: h-man at September 9, 2004 7:37 AMThis is arrant nonsense. When the area where I live was developed in the mid=60s, forest and farmland was made into 1/4 acre subdivisions. The bulk of the wildlife left. As time has progressed, the wildlife adapted and the deer come to eat from the garbage cans. There is also no shortage of wabbits.
About once a year the local news has a story of how a black bear found its way into Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.
Posted by: Bart at September 9, 2004 7:42 AMHere in CA, the loudest yells for "No Growth!" always come from the guy who just closed his escrow.
"I don't want a thing to change
Now that I Got Mine..."
-- Glenn Frye
I have seen deer walking down the four lane street I live on in Lansing. I have seen the bunnies oustisde eating.
When I delivered papers in Dearborn, MI, in the 1970's, in an area extremely built up for 30 years, I would see rabbit tracks in the snow all the time.
Posted by: Mikey at September 9, 2004 1:08 PMThis can't be the same species of rabbit that inhabits my neighborhood. The East Coast probably has more tree cover than it did when the Pilgrims arrived. Whenever I fly from Minneapolis to Providence, it is all trees from upper New York state in. Even in the Plains states, you will see more trees in the major metro areas than in the farmlands between. The new developments will have a healthy tree cover in a decade or so.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at September 9, 2004 1:12 PMRegenerating clearcuts make fine bunny habitat. New Hampshire just needs more logging.
Posted by: Jason Johnson at September 9, 2004 2:51 PM