Recent News

By Shawne K. Wickham
Manchester Union Leader, New Hampshire Sunday News

NEWINGTON - It's just after 8 a.m. and Tyler Mahard is hunting for rabbits.

Mahard, a wildlife technician for the state Fish and Game Department, is using telemetry equipment to search for rare New England cottontails inside a pen at the Great Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

Ted Kendziora is a habitat biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s New England Field Office in Concord, New Hampshire. Through the Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, Ted visits private landowners across the range of the New England cottontail, evaluating habitat and suggesting ways that landowners can make their holdings more hospitable to New England’s native rabbit.

By Diane Petit, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Massachusetts

Cape Cod’s beautiful seashore, inlets, salt marshes and woodlands are a natural draw for year-round and vacation home owners, and tourists. A boon for the local economy, the associated development is not so good for an elusive little creature: the New England cottontail rabbit. Habitat loss has New England’s only native rabbit as a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

From New Hampshire Fish and Game Department:
For the New England cottontail, mild winter conditions during 2011-2012 were a stroke of luck: The lack of snow made it easier for the bunnies to hide and find food. For the biologists who are surveying cottontails, the same conditions made it maddeningly difficult to find evidence of the rabbits' presence.