Wild rabbits must restore the population in the dunes of North Holland

Wild rabbits will soon be released into the dunes of Castricum. The foresters of the nature manager PWN hope to restore the population with this.

A series of viruses have caused significant rabbit deaths over the past few decades. As a result, the animals have now almost disappeared from the dunes, although they are important to the region.

Despite the introduction of new animals (grazing cattle) in the dune area, rabbits are sorely lacking. Animals have unique qualities. “The rabbit is important in the first zone behind the maritime strip”, explains forest ranger Véronique van Meurs NH News.

“There it is very poor in nutrients and the vegetation is sparse, but the rabbit can live there. And that then creates new habitat for other plants and animals.”

The rabbits used for the pilot repopulation project are wild rabbits that have been brought to a shelter beforehand. To accustom them to the dune area, two special cages were placed there. Now they still find food there, but soon they will have to harvest it themselves. Comparable experiments in France have shown that 60% of rabbits survive the test.

To prevent the animals collected in the protection cages from being caught by a virus immediately after their release, they were rigorously inspected. Additionally, the guinea pigs were vaccinated against the most common viral variants. This vaccination helps them during the first year. The intention is for the guinea pigs to reproduce extensively that year so that the resulting population can take a beating.

Watch the rabbits explore their new environment from an enclosure here: