Rabbits- how would we do without them?

[Gill Catton]

Rabbits are key I think in maintaining a lot of habitats including brownfield habitats where other grazing species just don't exist. No one is going to graze sheep in an urban wasteland with areas of contaminated land! They maintain an open sward which can benefit so many invertebrates.

Plus so many of our predators rely on them (to a varying degree) for food - buzzards, weasels, stoats, foxes etc and you have to think about what they would switch to if there were no more rabbits, so earthworms would take a greater hammering?, Voles and mice too, perhaps even harder to catch or unpleasant to eat animals like brown hare and grass snake. So this then impacts on species that rely on these things so thrushes, gulls, owls, kestrels, badgers etc would be hit.

Its massively complex this ecological web stuff almost impossible to predict.
For example, take a potentially reduced badger population caused by increased competition for earthworms (Ahem... or DEFRA), well badgers are very good at planting scrub and thickets so would this result in fewer areas of scrub in five years time or would the absence of rabbits (which might graze down scrub) result in more scrub anyway thereby cancelling out any reduction? Would more scrub result in more muntjac/ roe deer fawns surviving (as hidden from foxes) which then might halt the spread of further scrub? Vzzzzzzt Vzzzzzzzzzzzzt (The sound of my brain stalling)


As a more simple example, I believe the recovery of the iberian lynx population is struggling due to rabbit population crashes......

This is just the kind of question that has my brain spinning for ages! Think I'd better go for a lie down

[Wild-Woman]

Sorry Gill. If it helps I've been making and breaking food webs in my head (without rabbits) and I don't think we can manage without them now. I think they are inextricably interlinked with our ecology.
I can't even think of a small herbivore that would do the same job on some reserves as you have said.
I think our landscape would be very different without them.

[STYRBJORN]

I was thinking entirely in terms of animal relationships. I don't for one moment doubt that the disappearance of rabbits would have major effects on vegetation. I do wonder how important a role they play in the food chain in this country. As I have said, they are not an important component in the diet of our top mammalian predators, foxes and badgers. BOP might go hungry though. Even "scavengers" such as kites and buzzards will take rabbits. Nonetheless, I suggest that rabbits are too recently introduced to be more than opportunistic prey. 2000 years is a negligible time in evolutionary terms.

Ric.

[fairplay]

Another point to remember is re-introductions.

I live bang in the area where the RSPB planned to re-introduce the Sea Eagles.
The pig farmers put up the greatest opposition claiming the eagles will attack the piglets and when told they only go for carrion, the farmers said the eagles will spook the sow and she will smother the piglets.

So if the re-introduction did go ahead, eagles became well established, and then for some reason there was a drastic population crash with the rabbits, what would the sea eagles then turn to ?

(I'd better not say the numerous lost dogs in the forests and heathland )But it doesn't take much to work out that people in the game rearing industry, sheep rearing, pig breeding and even fishing lake owners would be very concerned.
I wonder now if the RSPB looked that far ahead ?

Neil.

[nige]

Originally Posted by STYRBJORN

I was thinking entirely in terms of animal relationships. I don't for one moment doubt that the disappearance of rabbits would have major effects on vegetation. I do wonder how important a role they play in the food chain in this country. As I have said, they are not an important component in the diet of our top mammalian predators, foxes and badgers. BOP might go hungry though. Even "scavengers" such as kites and buzzards will take rabbits. Nonetheless, I suggest that rabbits are too recently introduced to be more than opportunistic prey. 2000 years is a negligible time in evolutionary terms.

Ric.

Adaptation may well answer that, a rabbit isn't dead for long before something eats it, i would say in some ecosystems more than others rabbits are a main secondary consumer in-turn providing valuable energy to many scavengers, predators including man.

[STYRBJORN]

Originally Posted by nige

Adaptation may well answer that, a rabbit isn't dead for long before something eats it, i would say in some ecosystems more than others rabbits are a main secondary consumer in-turn providing valuable energy to many scavengers, predators including man.

Good point. Perhaps they have become important to scavengers rather than predators? I was focussed on just the one aspect - probably because I predate them myself!

Ric

[DorsetDunk]

As fairplay has mentioned the sea eagles and the RSPB how about the eagles owls the RSPB were considering a cull if there numbers increased to protect the hen harrier population but this goes against the European commission as they are protected and it believed now that the owls have reached our shores under their own steam rather than escapes according to the chap who reintroduced the sea eagles
i mention this because the staple diet of eagles owl here would be rabbit It would be beneficial to have another indigenous natural regulator controlling our rabbit population
i cant remember the dates when they were still resident here though there is an unconfirmed record of one at Handley common Dorset in 1887
they would have been present in Norman times and must have taken advantage of the introduced food source when rabbit became established here