Wild rabbits face population pressures from disease, predation, and control programs in agricultural settings, with significant welfare implications at population scale.
Wild rabbits in the UK face lethal disease epidemics causing progressive, distressing deaths from myxomatosis. Snaring causes prolonged suffering for entrapped animals. Gassing of burrows causes slow asphyxiation. Simultaneously, the loss of rabbits from agricultural landscapes has cascading ecological effects on species that depend on the short-grazed habitat rabbits maintain. The welfare of individual rabbits must be considered alongside the ecological value of populations, and control methods selected for minimum suffering.