Friend and foe.. the ups and downs of our rabbits
Many older readers will, I’m sure, remember a time when rabbits literally swarmed across the countryside.
By 1950, British farmers reckoned that they were losing £50m a year in crop losses largely due to the ravages of a burgeoning population of these strictly vegetarian animals which, in case, were not native to these shores. This was a time when the rabbit was perhaps at its zenith.
However, Britain’s rabbit population has experienced some very extreme ups and downs through the ages. There is some dispute as to when rabbits first set foot upon these islands but it is known that Julius Caesar dined extensively upon them in Rome. Therefore, it is not altogether surprising that some historians presume that it must have been the Romans who introduced them to Britain as a source of food and also fur. The Romans would certainly have known the rabbit well due to their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula which is the true home of the rabbit.
Yet the evidence suggests that the Normans were the culprits, roughly a thousand years after the Romans first arrived here. Interestingly, there is no mention of the rabbit in the Domesday Book, which was a pretty thorough audit of England if not Scotland. The Romans actually kept rabbits in walled areas called ‘leporaria’ and the Normans seem to have done the same.
It is thought they first brought the rabbit to England in the 12th century but inevitably, some rabbits escaped confinement and thus established themselves as part of England’s and later, Scotland’s fauna. However, it is worth remembering that Britain at that time was a land of heaths and forests, so not ideal for rabbits for such a landscape would not have yielded much in the way of succulent feeding.
Their presence here was increasingly documented during the 13th and subsequent centuries but their numbers were clearly limited with the exception, it seems, on the Island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel where concentrations of rabbits yielded annually 2000 skins, plus a fair amount of meat!
It can fairly safely be assumed that over the course of the following four centuries or so, rabbit remained a very useful addition to many a countryman’s dining table. It is also likely that their presence, albeit a pretty scattered presence, added significantly to the welfare of the likes of stoats, foxes, buzzards and red kites. For all these predators, rabbits must have represented relatively easy prey. Incidentally, rabbit meat is extremely rich in protein and very valuable indeed to any number of predators both furred and feathered.
The rabbit is thought to have arrived in Scotland by the 15th century and by the 16th century it was widespread throughout Britain but still relatively thin on the ground. Then improvements to the land began in earnest as the Agricultural Revolution began to ‘tame’ the British landscape and woodland was felled to make way for productive land. Heathland too was improved to make it more productive. Now more succulent crops were grown – a benefit not only to the massed ranks of people in a rapidly expanding human population but of considerable benefit to rabbits too!
With such a wealth of very succulent food now available, rabbits prospered and most folk will know that when conditions become favourable, rabbits are pretty enthusiastic multipliers! In response, litter sizes naturally increased and the rabbit population began to explode in response to this bonanza of food. At the same time, advancing technology now made the sport of shooting increasingly popular and accessible with large bags demanded by the growing number of opulent landowners.
Nowadays, it seems incongruous but rabbit poaching was regarded as a serious felony! Indeed, many poachers of rabbits, when convicted of such offences, found themselves along with other criminals transported to Australia for their sins. Others found themselves incarcerated or worse, strung up on the gibbet!
Many folk inhabiting remote islands off Scotland’s western and northern coasts largely existed on a diet of fish so it comes as no surprise that rabbits were introduced to many of these islands as a very welcome alternative source of high protein.
By the 1950s rabbits were regarded as the country’s main agricultural pest with rabbit clubs existing all over the country with their purpose to control numbers albeit that their endeavours were frustrated by the well known fecundity of rabbits.
But then in 1953/1954 myxomatosis came to Scotland! Immediately, many folk were disgusted by the pathetic sight of rabbits inflicted by this dreadful infection crawling around, blind and helpless. Previously, rabbit had become a staple part of the British diet; now it dropped from most people’s menus like a stone. Even many of those who had previously made a living from hunting rabbits by shooting, netting with ferrets or trapping, were appalled by the awful legacy of the ‘dreaded mixi’. Farmers however were relieved!
This resulted in a major downturn for our rabbits. It was estimated that an astonishing 99 per cent of rabbits in the UK perished. However, nature is remarkably resilient and before long, immunity to the disease began to develop so that numbers once more started to rise. I can remember seeing fields that, post-mixi, were well populated by rabbits albeit not to the extent that we saw in the early 1950s. However, by 1995 it was thought that the rabbit population had rebounded to such a degree, that their numbers had reached no fewer than 37 million! The Scottish population was put at just under 10 million. Rabbits on the up again!
But a new disease, viral haemorrhagic disease arrived in Scotland in 1995 and once more rabbits found themselves under siege. Where once they seethed, now they are absent. Recent calculations suggest that as many as 80 per cent of rabbits in Scotland have disappeared since its arrival. I’m sure that farmers may not mourn their passing yet because down the years they had become such an important prey species for stoats, foxes, buzzards and kites, but their demise is bound to have a serious knock-on effect. I haven’t for instance, seen a stoat in this airt for some considerable time.
I remember talking to a gamekeeper in this airt back in the 1950s. He feared that the advent of myxamotosis and the consequent absence of rabbits would have the effect of making predators focus more on game, notably pheasants. There is a certain resonance in that comment! But is Brer Rabbit facing oblivion? Somehow, I doubt it!