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That’s good news because more than 80 percent of the region’s New England cottontails have vanished in recent decades. The remaining population is being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act, the Connecticut Aububon Society said.
The Larsen Sanctuary is one of the few locations in Fairfield County with a confirmed population. And it turns out that they are long-term residents, the Connecticut Aububon Society said.
Milan Bull, senior director of science and conservation for the sanctuary, trapped and released New England cottontails at Larsen as part of a college research project in 1969.
In 2007, state wildlife biologists confirmed that the cottontails were still there. Then last month, the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection provided the sanctuary results of a survey from the winter of 2014-15 that confirmed the cottontails continue to live within the thickets and briar patches of the sanctuary.
New England cottontails are indistinguishable in the field from their close relatives, the much more common eastern cottontail, which are not native to Connecticut, so DNA tests are needed to confirm their presence.
Travis Goode of the DEEP said 12 samples were collected at Larsen last winter. Five were from New England cottontails and seven from eastern cottontails.
“Their presence in ‘69, 2007 and last winter shows that you have a persistent population of rabbits. So that in itself is good," Goode said.
The 155 acres of the Larsen sanctuary has 8 to 10 acres of rabbit habitat. Goode said that the persistence of the population over almost 40 years indicates that there are no doubt other pockets of habitat and cottontails nearby.
New England cottontail populations have fallen for the same reasons as so many other species – habitat degradation and fragmentation. The scrub-shrub growth that the rabbits need has given way to forests and lawns; housing developments, strip malls, and highways have prevented rabbits in one patch from mating with rabbits in another.
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