Wild rabbits face multiple human-caused welfare challenges including myxomatosis, hemorrhagic disease, and lethal pest control methods. Understanding these issues informs humane management.
Wild rabbits face significant welfare harms from both introduced diseases and pest control activities. Myxomatosis, deliberately introduced to reduce rabbit populations and still maintained at endemic levels through disease spread, causes an extremely slow and distressing death involving swelling, blindness, and respiratory failure over nearly two weeks. Rabbit hemorrhagic disease, whether introduced deliberately or spreading naturally, kills rabbits through internal hemorrhage. Pest control methods including gassing, snaring, and ferret-hunting cause welfare harms to individual animals. Vaccination programs for domestic rabbits exist, and there is an ongoing debate about whether endemic diseases like myxomatosis are justified population management tools given the suffering they cause.