In Villa de Don Fadrique, province of Toledo, the city council has just activated an extraordinary authorization to kill rabbits daily. In fact, it is inviting volunteers to reduce its population to a minimum. It is an all-out war against these rodents that are becoming a real headache for farmers across the country.
And it is curious because, if we look at the data, the truth is that the European rabbit entered the IUCN red list of threatened species in 2019. Can it be in danger and be an indiscriminate pest at the same time?
And the answer is yes, of course yes. A few days ago, it was the Union of Farmers and Ranchers of Castilla la Mancha that warned that “the proliferation of rabbits is a problem that has been going on for ten years, they speak of a ‘plague’ that is threatening olive groves and pistachio and almond trees, and they demand that the populations of these animals be controlled.”
It is not an anecdotal impression, a sector report indicates that rabbits account for 64% of agricultural insurance payments for wildlife damage and averages of tens of thousands of hectares damaged per year are cited.
And yet, the decline of the rabbit at a general level it’s clear. And that not only impacts the “bug” itself: whether we like it or not, it is the base of the food chain of more than 30 species (from the Iberian lynx to the imperial eagle) and its failure alters the functioning of the Mediterranean forest. He’s been altering it for decades.
Because what is clear is that this is not something recent. The decline of the European rabbit is associated with myxomatosis, first (mid-20th century); It then continues with rabbit hemorrhagic disease in the 80s; and it is complicated by the arrival in 2012 of a new variant (RHDV2) that affects populations just when they were beginning to recover.
To this we must add the changes in the landscape and the disappearance of boundaries, fallow lands and traditional shelters.
However, when God closes a door he opens a window. And, despite the general decline, rabbits have known how to use the gaps in human infrastructure to create authentic breeding sites. Slopes and roadsides have become tremendously favorable habitats (and even vectors of movement) and areas with constant food (irrigation/crops) are natural attractors for these reduced populations.
That is to say, the explanation is simple: the populations are smaller, but they have been rearranged in areas that cause more damage to farmers.
And thus, the conflict is served. While conservationists and scientists ask to recover the rabbit in the mountains, farmers ask to expel it from its areas of influence. But the curious thing is that both sides are partly right and we do not have stories that allow us to understand what is happening. Something that is also happening with all the bugs on the mountain.
Imagen | Sönke Biehl
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