Save the Easter Bunny

Baby rabbits nibbling at meadow edges make endearing scenes across lowland Britain, or they did until recent years. Our rabbit population is under threat – so much so that conservationists are building ‘hotels’ to protect the species, reports Amy-Jane Beer

- By Amy-Jane Beer. Photographs by Getty, Alamy and Picfair

Our lane is bunny central. Arriving after dusk, you will almost always see between one and two dozen lolloping, furry forms in the space of 100 metres. They are regulars in the garden, and one morning I came down to my study to find a youngster camped under a bookcase.

Not everyone is a fan – farmers, foresters and horticulturists object to thievery – but at this time of year, only the stoniest heart can fail to soften at the sight of pompom babies (known as kits or kittens) relishing their first experience of sunshine: stubby ears pricked, noses twitching, eyes wide.

Not only are rabbits survivors and opportunists with complex societies and a famously fecund reproductive strategy evolved to counter heavy predation, but our countryside and culture would not be the same without them. Yet their numbers are dramatically down in many areas of the UK. Could they become a rare sight?

Our resident wild rabbits are not native, prehistoric populations having died out before Britain was islanded by rising seas. Rabbits were introduced more than once– first by the Romans, who kept them captive, and then in much greater numbers in the 12th century. Originally farmed on offshore islands or in enclosures known as warrens or coneygarths, they subsequently escaped or were released to populate the wider countryside. It seems they remained relatively scarce in the wild until the late 1700s, when intensification of agriculture created much easier conditions for them. By the early to mid-20th century, the population had become pestilential.