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Unlike their relatives, pygmy rabbits seek food and shelter in tall, dense sagebrush plants, as found at Washington’s Sagebrush Flats. (Photo: Courtesy Rod Sayler, Washington State University)

Roberts, who last year became head of WDFW’s CBPR recovery effort, is working to save a rabbit as unusual as it is rare. It depends heavily on tall, dense sagebrush habitat for both food and shelter, digs burrows and weighs scarcely a pound, sometimes less. These traits are shared by all pygmy rabbits—those scattered in several western states as well as the disjunct Columbia Basin population [PDF map]. Other U.S. rabbit species prefer meadows or grasslands, where they scrape a simple depression in the soil, and are larger.

Unique approach for unique rabbit

Since October 2006, Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits have also had a unique Safe Harbor Agreement to encourage landowners to participate in recovery efforts and restore and maintain sagebrush habitat. Unlike any of the other five-dozen-plus Safe Harbors, it is neither a standard multi-landowner programmatic agreement, nor a single-landowner agreement, but a hybrid of the two.Officially known as a template Safe Harbor, it is designed to encompass multiple landowners, but without the permit holder who usually brings individual landowners under the Safe Harbor umbrella. Instead, each landowner completes a site plan that includes specific baseline conditions, spells out agreed-upon conservation measures and references the template agreement’s background biological information and administrative measures. The landowner then submits the site plan and a permit application to FWS for approval.

Landowners join recovery effort

WDFW assumes many permit holder responsibilities, including making contact with landowners, but declined the official role. Agency Ecological Restoration Specialist David Hays, who as Roberts’s predecessor participated in the template agreement’s creation and inception, says limited resources were one reason.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s David Hays in 2007 with a soon-to-be-released Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit. (Photo: Courtesy Rod Sayler, Washington State University)

He also notes that prospective enrollees preferred to work out Safe Harbor specifics directly with FWS. They liked Safe Harbor’s legal assurances that their Endangered Species Act legal responsibilities would not increase if the rabbit settled on their property. That gave the state the opportunity to survey for the rabbit on private land. “The tide turned,” Hays says. “People were willing to work with us.”Safe Harbor advocates see advantages and disadvantages to the template structure. Biologist Julie Moore, who is FWS’s national safe harbor coordinator, envisions wider use of the template structure as a practical solution when no entity is available to serve as permit holder. “It’s a mechanism that improves how we deliver Safe Harbor benefits, and it really will facilitate enrolling multiple landowners in an agreement designed to benefit a particular species by streamlining the application and analysis process.”Center for Conservation Incentives Director Michael Bean, who has worked on Safe Harbor policy and projects over the program’s entire lifetime, agrees that a template Safe Harbor can be helpful in such situations. Yet he notes that a template agreement does require individual landowners to undergo publication of a Federal Register notice and await a public comment period before they can enroll, a procedure bypassed by a programmatic agreement.Chris Warren, FWS’s Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit recovery coordinator, says that his agency expedites that step by batching applications. The first three landowner applications were published in the Federal Register along with the draft template agreement notice in August 2006, and 13 more in an April 2007 notice.When the agreement was launched, Hays notes, the state already had a private lands specialist on board who had worked in the area for over a decade. That experience enabled them to quickly identify landowners likely to enroll among area farmers and ranchers. The Nature Conservancy also enrolled properties it owns.

A full-sized Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit weighs scarcely a pound and sometimes less. (Photo: Courtesy Rod Sayler, Washington State University)

The last known wild CBPR population vanished in 2004, according to Warren. He says that the pygmy rabbits brought from Idaho for cross-breeding do not differ in appearance from the captive Columbia Basin rabbits and are not a separate subspecies, though comprehensive DNA studies have not been conducted. The goal is to restore a population of rabbits with a minimum of 75% CBPR ancestry, and Roberts said that today’s adult population is comprised of individuals with a minimum 50% CBPR genes, and the majority has greater than 75% CBPR genes.Washington State University has researched and raised CBPRs in captivity for several years. In 2007 it led an effort to reintroduce captive-bred animals to the wild. All 20 rabbits died, most within a month, although two were captured after dispersing too far.

Cautious hope for future

For now, reintroductions are on hold. “Juvenile mortality in the captive-bred population continues to be high and too variable to insure a viable captive population and a proportion for release,” says Roberts. “We are going to wait until the end of the 2008-breeding season to assess our options for 2009.”

A Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit depends heavily on sagebrush, which provides up to 99% of its winter food. (Photo: Courtesy Len Zeoli, Washington State University)

Though it didn’t return rabbits back in the wild for the long term, the 2007 reintroduction does offer some promise for eventual recovery. WSU Ph.D. candidate and researcher Len Zeoli discovered and photographed a young rabbit, born to one of three females that lived long enough to give birth after release. “Needless to say I was pretty excited. It was too small for a receiver when I first found it, and we don’t know how long it lived. It was seen again in late summer, and we went out to put a radio collar on, but it was never found again.”Later, Zeoli discovered a female digging a natal burrow to house a separate litter, further proof that captive-bred rabbits will reproduce in the wild. That’s good news for the rabbits and for the determined alliance of government agencies, researchers, Safe Harbor landowners and non-profit organizations working on the goal of restoring this unique animal of the Columbia Basin sagebrush.Margaret McMillan
Endangered Species Specialist
Center for Conservation Incentives
Environmental Defense Fund