The rise and fall of the common British rabbit
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MAMMALS found in the Highlands have been in the news – one being the rarest in the UK and the other, perhaps, being the most common.
The first is the very rare black rat. Yes, the black rat as opposed to the ubiquitous brown rat.
The colony of black rats on the remote Shiants in the Western Isles is believed to be the only colony left in the UK. Until a few months ago they were considered not to be harmful to the rest of the wildlife on this archipelago that includes a large and important number of seabirds.
Then, as reported in this column, Scottish Natural Heritage changed its mind and now there is an expensive programme to get rid of them. More on that in a future article.
The other mammal is the rabbit which, considering its abundance, seems an unlikely candidate to make the news these days.
In the last few months there has been a great deal of discussion about the decline of the rabbit. Readers were writing to say they had not seen any rabbits in their areas and had never known this before.
Rabbits are easily overlooked but in this case it was also borne out by the fact that no dead rabbits were being seen on the roads. Indeed if you saw a dead or a live rabbit it was worthy of note.
For the first time ever, I started to record where there were rabbits as opposed to where there were none. I cannot ever recall doing that in my wildlife diary before.
Rabbits have probably been responsible for more damage to agricultural crops than any other mammal and, for those that can remember, the numbers before the myxymatosis disease were just incredible. It could look as though a whole field was heaving with them.
However, while there was, and still is in a few parts, damage, there is the other side of the coin that most people forget. Rabbits are good to eat and in days gone past, many a family in the countryside were grateful for the rabbit as food.
There is also another important factor – the rabbit provides food for more mammals and birds than any other.
Islands, such as those off the western seaboard, can be home to rabbits where they can multiply and cause serious problems and such has been the case in the last few years on the island of Canna, one of the four main islands that make up the Small Isles that also include Rum, Muck and Eigg. The largest of these, by far, is Rum at more than 10,000 hectares whilst Canna is a mere 1,130 hectares.
A few years ago Canna had a problem with brown rats and they were culled successfully – but then the rabbit numbers escalated. No doubt this was partly because the rats were not there to control the numbers of rabbits.
Then the rabbits reached plague proportions and did damage ranging from denuding all vegetation to, as the last straw, causing a landslide that blocked a road.
So the rabbit controllers from Hamp-shire were called in and the numbers they took have been amazing. So far they have culled 9,000 rabbits – yes, 9,000.
Before the reports I could not have believed the numbers or the fact that the estimate is that there are still around 7,000 rabbits left on the island and the cull is ongoing.
Various methods were used to cull the rabbits such as traps, rifles, shotguns, dogs, just about any method.
Culling techniques had to bear in mind that the method could dictate the sale price and rabbits killed with shotguns often had too much damage to them. So where did they go? To France at £1 each so none were wasted.
I wonder if the islanders still have rabbit on the menu occasionally?
