FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Pygmy rabbit may be put on the list of endangered species

By Kate Ramsayer, The Bulletin

At less than a foot long and weighing in at about a pound, pygmy rabbits are pretty close to the bottom of the food chain in the sagebrush ecosystems where they live.

"Everything preys on them - coyotes, birds of prey, badgers," said Michael Illig, assistant curator at the Oregon Zoo. But one of the chief dangers to the tiny rabbit, the smallest in North America, is the loss of the sagebrush itself, he said. "The main threat is habitat loss," he said. "A lot of their native land has been turned over to grazing and ranching."

With wildfires and invasive plants also posing a threat to their habitat,
and biologists still unsure about the number of rabbits in the wild, the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is conducting a study to see if the animals should be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
The federal agency completed a 90-day finding earlier this month, said Phil Carroll, spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife service, and determined that listing the pygmy rabbits might be warranted. Now, the agency is doing a status review to determine if it is warranted, and is taking public comments on the issue.

"They're very unique rabbits," Illig said. Not only are they very small with a short, round body, but they dig their own burrows and have "stubby" limbs that have evolved for that purpose.  "They're still really fast, but they're built for digging rather than running like a jackrabbit," he said. They're also good climbers, and will climb into sagebrush. They are also one of the few animals that can get enough nutrition from sagebrush to last them through the winter, he said.

The rabbits historically lived in parts of Oregon and other states in the
West, but are only found in specific habitats, said Todd Forbes, an
assistant field manager with the Lakeview District of the Bureau of Land Management, who has studied the rabbits. In Oregon, they've been found in several Eastern Oregon counties, and populations have been found as far north as U.S. Highway 20 near the Deschutes County and Crook County line.

They need to have soils that aren't too rocky, which would prevent them from digging their burrows, and that aren't too loose, which could cause burrows to collapse. "Your soils have to have the right mix of clays and loams, and the right context to hold a burrow," he said.
The burrows can have as many as a dozen different entrances, he said, and he added that he suspects some burrows are used for hundreds of generations of rabbits.  They need shrub cover, but biologists are still trying to find out how much is necessary, Forbes said.

Trying to put a number on the population in Oregon is a tricky question, since the population hasn't been surveyed, he said, but there are probably thousands of rabbits. "Without a whole lot of science and a whole lot of money invested in it, there's no way to answer that," he said. But he and others have done studies by looking to see if rabbits are currently occupying sites where they were 20 years ago, he said.

"We find rabbits in just about all of those, with the exception of areas
that have undergone a major change," Forbes said.
And those changes can come from large range fires that burn up the sagebrush habitat, or development, which is especially a problem in Nevada, he said. "Probably the biggest threat in Oregon is large-scale habitat conversion," he said. "That can be temporary conversion from wildfires, or the more ominous threat is permanent conversion from invasive plants."  Invasive plants can take the place of the sagebrush, he said, and also make the areas more susceptible to fires.

Many of the problems faced by species that live in sagebrush ecosystems have to do with livestock, said Bill Marlett, senior conservation adviser for the Bend-based Oregon Natural Desert Association. "As livestock move through an area and remove grasses from underneath the sagebrush canopy, it leaves rabbits exposed to predation," he said. "When it's a small bird or rabbit, it's kind of moving from one clump to another, and they're fairly easy
pickings."

Illig said he would be in favor of the Fish and Wildlife Service listing the pygmy rabbit, and added that doing so could help other species associated with the sagebrush ecosystem as well. Plus, he said, it's easier to start protecting animals before they start to decline dramatically. "The trick is to list the species at a critical point," Illig said, "where there's still enough left to recover the population."

Kate Ramsayer can be  reached at 617-7811 or kramsayer@bendbulletin.com.

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