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Feral bunnies taking over Las Vegas

kenny

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http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/feral-bunnies-are-taking-over-las-vegas?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=qz

Feral Bunnies Are Taking Over Las Vegas
They've overrun yards, state parks, and even a mental health care facility—and no one knows what to do with them.

By Cara Giaimo FEBRUARY 01, 2017

In early 2015, Dave Schweiger, a longtime Las Vegas resident, came home from work to find his teenage daughter sitting on the lawn, surrounded by six bunnies. These weren’t the dun-colored jackrabbits of the Nevada desert: they were bonafide domestic bunnies, sleek and multipatterned, with cute ears and fuzzy coats. The Schweigers, who are animal lovers, were unfazed. They started buying extra carrots on their weekly trip to Costco.

But six bunnies doesn’t stay six bunnies for long. Within two months, there were 24 living under the Schweiger’s shed. When, with the help of a local rescue center, Dave caught them and took them to the vet to get neutered, he found out several of his new friends were pregnant again. “In another month, we would have had over 50,” he says. If they hadn’t taken action, the Schweigers’ yard might have turned into a common, but little-known Sin City feature: the bunny refugee camp.

The yards, parks and lots of Vegas are home to thousands of feral rabbits. Known as “bunny dump sites” to the legions of volunteers that care for their residents, they’re strange places, more tragic than adorable, where the human heart clashes with the limited resources of the state. Released by overwhelmed pet-owners and left to breed, the rabbits now overwhelm any attempt at government control, digging up public property, chewing on pipes, and ending up dead in the sewers. To survive, they depend entirely on the kindness of self-identified “bunny-lovers”—volunteers faced with an impossible task.

Schweiger works near one of the more legendary dump sites, a state-run mental health facility in the center-west of the city. It’s home to hundreds, if not thousands, of rabbits—although if you didn’t already know that, you might not find out. “You go out to the field and you don’t see any,” Schweiger says. “I start throwing out hay, romaine lettuce, and carrots, and they just come out of everywhere.”

Schweiger runs an awareness-building website called Las-Vegas-Bunnies.com, and often meets other concerned citizens at this particular site to feed and check on the rabbits. In a video from his most recent visit, scores of excited bunnies traipse over the dead grass and under the picnic tables as volunteers strew bits of lettuce across the ground.

The facility was also the site of the most recent official attempt to address the problem. Last year, the state gave V Animal Sanctuary, a local farm and domestic animal shelter run by Sacbe Meling, a $17,000 contract to capture, spay, and rehome a few hundred rabbits. In a Channel 13 News investigation, the state said it expected 80 percent of the rabbits to be gone within six months. But although Meling did what he was supposed to—he says he got 258 rabbits off the property, although many were too sick to rehome—it wasn’t nearly enough, and whatever dent he made in the feral population was filled within months.

In Meling’s view, his experience illustrates the many intractable issues facing anyone who tries to pull off a long-term fix. “The issue is not one that can be fixed in a couple of months, or even a year, without a proper budget,” he says. He estimates that, even if volunteers did all the work, at least $1.5 million would be required—money that citizens could, and likely would, argue should be spent elsewhere. “There’s going to be a group that’s going to complain, ‘Why’s that going for animals? Why not for homeless people, or for the vets?’” Meling says.

In the very small chance you managed to drum up the funds, there’s the problem of space—what hoppens in Vegas has to stay in Vegas, but where? “Once you take them, where are you going to put them?” he asks. “Someone’s going to have to float a whole property for rabbits, and I don’t see that happening. I think it’s just a never-ending issue.” The state did not respond to a request for comment.

In the meantime, various volunteers and groups work to make the situation a little more tenable for the rabbits. Their most effective option—”trap, neuter, return,” in which bunnies are spayed or neutered and then brought back to the wild—is technically illegal in Las Vegas, as the “release” part of it constitutes abandonment. Instead, they focus on keeping them strong and healthy, so they can survive their lives’ many difficulties. They’re territorial, and if food is scarce, they’ll fight each other. Snow and heat both take a toll on them. Although hunting, culling, or poisoning the rabbits is illegal, there have been rumors of bowhunting, and last summer some volunteers found avocado—deadly to baby rabbits—stuffed deep into a warren.

Schweiger, who walks past a local crew of bunnies every night with his wife, goes through a few 10-pound bags of Costco carrots per week, along with a dozen or so heads of romaine. Evenings and weekends he goes to the state facility, where he regularly leaves big jugs of water. Of his 1500 or so Facebook friends, Schweiger estimates 1200 are fellow rabbit helpers, each with their own chosen territory. “There’s people at Floyd Lamb State Park, people at Sunset Park,” he says. “We’ve got a bunch of rogue bunny-lovers all over, feeding.”

Education is another vital prong in the volunteers’ approach. A lot of people don’t know the truth about pet rabbits, says Schweiger. If people are dissuaded from adopting one before they’re truly ready, they’re less likely to abandon them—and if they’re empowered to treat them well, they might be encouraged to adopt one of the many rescue bunnies that he and others are currently fostering. On a Facebook wall called “Bunnies Matter in Vegas Too,” successful rescues with names like Oreo and Patriot twitch their noses and explain what is required to properly take care of them—chew toys, a good pen with a litter box, a local vet who’s willing to handle the occasional bout of rabbit colic.

Schweiger himself is back up to seven rabbits—two in the garage, five in the house. If possible, he’d like to rehome them, but in the meantime, he’s ok with being greeted by them every evening, sleek and happy in their pens, safe from starvation, poison, and other rabbits. “They’re such good bunnies,” he says. “If I can ever get them adopted, people would be amazed.”
 
Wow. Is that for real? How sad.
They are going to need to figure out how to deal with that. A female rabbit can have 1-14 babies in a litter starting at only six months old and they can become pregnant within minutes after birth :shock: Their gestation period is about 30 days, so one female could hypothetically give birth 12 times a year! :?
 
momhappy|1486991674|4128036 said:
They are going to need to figure out how to deal with that.

When the Trump depression hits, and people are hungry, the rabbit problem will go away. ;(
But what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. :sick:
 
I should have known you'd tie it in with Trump somehow... ;)
 
Of course!!! :twisted: :wavey:
 
Now you've got me curious. We have one litter per year in our yard - we live in the suburbs on a small lot (.20 acres). We spend a week or two chasing our dog away from the babies then they move along, their hole closes up. Then we don't see another new bunny family until the next year. At the risk of sounding like a total dunce - these are generic *suburb* rabbits. Cute as a button, smallish, brown rabbits. I'm wondering now - how is this population controlled or are there way more than I ever see (like this article mentions)? Guess I know what I'll be googling tonight!

In all seriousness - this is sad. I do not understand people who have the attitude that animals are disposable. It's just so beyond my comprehension.
 
I know we have this 'problem' in Canada too. Victoria and Canmore I know have them. They started trapping/killing them because they were getting out of control and all the PETA/animal rights people had a field day.
 
puppmom|1487021954|4128213 said:
Now you've got me curious. We have one litter per year in our yard - we live in the suburbs on a small lot (.20 acres). We spend a week or two chasing our dog away from the babies then they move along, their hole closes up. Then we don't see another new bunny family until the next year. At the risk of sounding like a total dunce - these are generic *suburb* rabbits. Cute as a button, smallish, brown rabbits. I'm wondering now - how is this population controlled or are there way more than I ever see (like this article mentions)? Guess I know what I'll be googling tonight!

In all seriousness - this is sad. I do not understand people who have the attitude that animals are disposable. It's just so beyond my comprehension.

I suspect your dog is 'controlling' the population.

But don't panic.
That's organic.

But yeah, I hate that people dispose of pets they never should have gotten. :angryfire:
Bunnies are especially vulnerable because people get them for their kids on Easter. :nono:

A couple bunnies hopping around the backyard is cute.
723 hopping around? Not so cute.
 
Very sad.

I'm a bit surprised that hawks and other birds of prey aren't catching them. But maybe there are not enough predators for the surge in the rabbit population.
 
I googled, "How fast can rabbits reproduce".

Below is a snip from the first hit http://www.bio.miami.edu/hare/scary.html

... it starts with only one breeding pair. YIKES!

Year Two: 1332
Year Three: 49,284
Year Four: 1,823,508
Year Five: 67,420,512
Year Six: 2,494,558,944
Year Seven: 92,298,716,930
Add that to the females, and it means that first mama and her female descendants will have produced
184,597,433,860 rabbits in seven years.
 
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