Saving the New England Cottontail

In July, Roger William Park Zoo’s director of conservation programs Lou Perrotti was joined by agents from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and University of Rhode Island biologists in releasing a pair of New England cottontails at Charlestown’s Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge.

The New England cottontail, a species of rabbit native to parts of New England and New York, is closely related to the non-native Eastern cottontail, the most common rabbit species in North America. Both habitat loss and competition with its Eastern cousin have decimated New England cottontail populations over the last 50 years.

Researchers from the International Union for Conservation

of Nature estimate there are less than 17,000 New England cottontails left in the wild, spread throughout southern Maine, southern New Hampshire, parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York east of the Hudson River. The remaining cottontails in the wild occupy less than one fifth of their historic range.

“It’s our only native cottontail rabbit,” said Perrotti. “The goal for the project is to breed rabbits in captivity and reintroduce them throughout New England to create new populations and augment existing populations.” Alongside the reintroduction efforts, he added, is a habitat restoration component in which several other partner institutions participate.

According to Perrotti, the National Wildlife Refuge serves as a perfect location in which to introduce captive-bred New England cottontails into their natural habitat. The park’s 350acre release site is the ideal spot to ease the rabbits into their transition to life in the wild.

“It’s a perfect early successional habitat, which they prefer,” said Perrotti, referencing the park’s voraciously growing grasses, shrubs and thickets which provide excellent food and shelter for native wildlife. “The Refuge is also the last site where we observed wild New England cottontails in Rhode Island, back in 2006.”

Since 2010, New England Cottontail captive breeding institutions have made promising progress toward boosting cottontail numbers, releasing over 300 captive-bred specimens into the wild. Partners also work to protect and restore habitat throughout the range of this species. Roger Williams Park Zoo continues to play an integral role in restoring New England cottontail populations through breeding and reintroduction programs.

The Zoo’s New England cottontail program, like many others, was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. After successful years in 2018 and 2019 - seeing over 150 specimens released into locations around New England - the rapid spread of the virus brought the 2020 breeding

season to a grinding halt. According to Perrotti, there were too many uncertainties to continue the captive breeding programs.

“At the Zoo, we had to split the staff up, we didn’t know what interstate travel would look like or whether we could do releases

across state lines,” Perrotti said, noting that many state and federal biologists were left in a similar state of flux.

“We were unable to go out in groups and do field work so that hampered what we could do, how

“It’s our only native cottontail rabbit,”

we could do it, and when we could do it. Unfortunately, we decided it would be best to just take the rest of 2020 off. Luckily the Zoo managed to sneak a couple of broods in before the pandemic struck, which is how we ended up with the pair of rabbits that were released in July.”

Perrotti is hopeful that the breeding program will resume stronger than ever in 2021, helping to create strong New England Cottontail populations across the region.

“I would like to see self-sustaining populations established across the range to the point where we don’t have to augment or create new populations,” he said. “That’s the ultimate goal, of any recovery program.”