Rabbits: the "pests" that we actually couldn't do without

During my sort out process that I alluded to in my last Facebook post, I started to realise just how many rabbit picturess I had, to the point where it looks like I'm a bit of a rabbit stalker 😂.

Even worse, whenever i say to people i like photographing rabbits, they look at me like i'm mad! "Rabbits?" ,they say, dumbfounded, staring at me like I have 2 heads, "but they're just a pest". Well, yes, according to the British (and Australian and no doubt some others) government they are indeed a pest. The official line is that they are a non-native (they were introduced to Britain by the Normans to provide food and fur), invasive species who cause over £100 million worth of damage each year. Most people are also surprised to hear that they are afforded no protection whatsoever, in fact the whole of England and Wales i(with a few exceptions) is actually designated a "rabbit-clearance area".

But that's not the whole story. As a rabbit fan (admittedly I'm not a farmer or a land owner, just a lowly wildlife photographer), I feel its important to share both sides of the story!. Whilst non-native, they can be incredibly good for the environment, to the point where they are deemed to be a "keystone" species, that is a species that essentially holds together an entire system and without that species, the ecosystem would not be the same, or may not even exist at all! So, you say, what's so great about rabbits then that they are so important? For starters, they help keep vegetation under control, stopping invasive species such as bramble, gorse and hawthorn from spreading like wildfire across the UK countryside. The knock on affect of this is that low-growing plants get the opportunity to grow. Even better, when rabbits move between these low growing plants, their seeds are dispersed, thus helping them gain new ground. These low growing plants then attract ants, butterflies and numerous other insect species which in turn attract birds. As a prey species, rabbits also form an important diet for numerous animals such as badgers, buzzards, stoats, weasels and even feral cats.

What started as a quick facebook post to showcase some rabbit pictures ended up being a 2 or 3 day research project, with hours spent sifting through the 1000s of internet posts about how to get rid of rabbits in the hope I would find some articles that came out in their favour. Whilst researching this post, I chanced upon an article by the guardian from about a week ago (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/28/hope-rabbit-hotels-can-help-britains-decimated-population-bounce-back) that talks about the decline of rabbits in the UK, mostly through myxomatosis and RHDV2 (Rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus) and how there has been a sharp decline in rabbits in recent times. This has led to a national lottery funded project whereby landowners in some regions are being encouraged to take part in a project to create rabbit "hotels", piles of branches artfully arranged near existing rabbit warrens in order to provide safety from predators, not to mention to give new places for female rabbits to burrow and give birth to their kits. This seems to be a fantastic initiative, aimed at helping multiple species, not just rabbits. The only confusion I have is that the project is being run by Natural England, the government's adviser for the natural environment in england. So on the one hand, the government are saying that as a landowner you have a duty by law to kill rabbit pests, yet on the other they are acknowledging that they are in decline in multiple areas: This decline is not just UK wide, its got so bad in their native Iberian peninsular that they have now been classed as an endangered species!

I listed several reasons above as to why rabbits are good but i deliberately missed one out. I believe watching them is good for your mental health. I personally believe that watching any animals in a wild setting is good for the soul and I definitely notice the difference in my own mindset during times when, due to other work commitments or needing to spend time mostly at a computer processing thousands of images, I'm not able to get out with the camera for long periods of time. Due to their size, habitat and sheer numbers, rabbits are probably the most commonly seen wild mammal in the UK, definitely in my own experience at least. Quite often I stop at a field with an abundance of rabbits for a couple of minutes, just to see what's about and end up leaving half an hour later, mumbling to myself that I've just taken about 50 photos that'll never end up seeing the light of day. The truth of the matter is that I've just felt good watching them chase each other around, or marvelled at how relaxed they've been when there were fox cubs playing just a few feet away from them.

So that's why i personally don't find them to be pests but I'll leave you to make up your own minds

Rabbits: the "pests" that we actually couldn't do without

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