Heavy winter rains in California are a welcome respite from drought, but also troublesome. Leaking reservoir threats, landslides, and flooded roadways throughout the state are severe enough to be declared a federal disaster. The intense rainfall has even affected bunnies who live only in riparian habitat. Riparian bush rabbits are flooded out of their homes in the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge (SJRNWR) in the southern portion of California’s Central Valley. And the refuge staff is busy finding and rescuing the endangered bush rabbits stranded amidst the flood.
The small cottontail rabbit lives in riparian oak forests with a dense understory of wild roses, grapes and blackberries. They stay within a few feet of cover in their small home ranges. A decade ago, refuge staff built up high refugia — bunny mounds — within the floodplain and planted shrubs on high levees for rabbits to wait out floods. The SJRNWR has 35 mounds and 8 miles of vegetated levees but still some bunnies are trapped by flood waters and unable to reach high grounds. Spotting the rabbits isn’t easy.
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Because of major flooding along the San Joaquin River, refuge staff has rescued 80 rabbits so far, catching them into sacks and releasing them on high safe ground.
Rescuing them is especially critical as their population is small. When first listed on the Endangered Species Act in the late 1990’s only a few individuals were known in the wild. A recovery plan begun in 2001 involved captive breeding and release and helped establish a population in the refuge. Before the breeding program began, only one population was known — at Caswell Memorial State Park on the Stanislaus River. After severe flooding in the park during 1997, only one rabbit was found from the 200-300 known present before the flood. In addition to captive breeding, other projects are helping restore the rabbits. Over 90 percent of their habitat has been eliminated by human actions such as dams, levees, commercial and agricultural developments. Introduced threats include domestic cats and other non-native predators, rodenticides, wildfires and floods.
Due to these human-caused threats, only one out of every six baby bunnies survives long enough to breed. The Endangered Species Act provided the regulatory support for identifying critical habitat and establishing a restoration program. And in a winter of heavy rainfall that could wipe out the fragile populations, humans are rescuing bunnies from the floods.
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