April 7, 2003
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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A coalition of six conservation groups, including Western Watersheds Project, the Committee for the High Desert, and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance has petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list pygmy rabbits in the Intermountain and Great Basin regions of the West as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

The groups also want FWS to designate critical habitat for the rare rabbits concurrent with ESA listing.

Scientific studies show that these sagebrush-dependent rabbits face extinction without ESA protection. Pygmy rabbits have been on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources since 1996.

The petition applies to all remaining pygmy rabbit populations outside the range of the Columbia River Basin.

“The pygmy rabbit is a unique species that has already been lost from more than 90 percent of its historic range,” said Katie Fite, conservation director of the Committee for the High Desert. “Livestock continue to destroy the structure of sagebrush plants that are essential to the rabbits’ survival.”

Pygmy rabbits depend on sagebrush for 99 percent of their winter diet. Sagebrush also provides them with critical cover from keen-eyed predators such as hawks and eagles.

These diminutive rabbits have long since won the hearts of wildlife enthusiasts, range ecologists and even many livestock operators.

“These entrancing little bright-eyed creatures are animated bundles of fur . . . there is no wild creature more deserving of the word ‘cute’ than these dwarves of the rabbit tribe,” note E.R. Jackman and R.A. Long in their book, “The Oregon Desert.”

The geographic range of pygmy rabbits once spanned more than 100 million acres across eight western states (Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington). That range has declined to fragmented portions of 7 million to 8 million acres.

Only three larger populations of pygmy rabbits remain, and even these are divided into small pockets by habitat fragmentation and human impacts. Pygmy rabbits do not disperse well and are reluctant to cross open areas, multiplying the effects of fragmentation.

Fragmentation and loss of large sagebrush habitat are rampant throughout the rabbits’ range. Livestock grazing, which occurs on nearly all of the areas inhabited by pygmy rabbits, radically alters sagebrush habitat, removing forage, lowering the nutritional value of grasses, spreading exotic weeds and diseases, collapsing burrows and attracting predators.

Other dire threats to pygmy rabbits include prescribed fires; manipulation of vegetation for livestock forage; oil, gas and coalbed methane exploration and production; geothermal exploration and production; and road-building and OHV use.

“The pygmy rabbit is a specialist that lives only in large, old sagebrush, and the current oil and gas boom in western Wyoming is threatening to overrun much of it,” said Jeff Kessler, conservation director of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance there. “The BLM has repeatedly failed to adopt the needed conservation measures while the pygmy rabbit marches toward extinction. ESA protection is therefore absolutely necessary.”

“The BLM is allowing its essential sagebrush habitats to be pounded to oblivion by livestock,” said Fite. “If we can't save this species, there is absolutely no hope for long-term survival of any sagebrush-dependent wildlife.”

Joining CHD and WWP in the petition are the American Lands Alliance, Oregon Natural Desert Association, Center for Native Ecosystems and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.