Wild rabbit populations in Britain have declined dramatically due to myxomatosis and rabbit haemorrhagic disease, with significant welfare implications for both the rabbits and predators that depend on them.
Wild rabbit disease outbreaks cause suffering at enormous scale. Myxomatosis is one of the most visibly distressing wildlife diseases, causing severely swollen and sealed eyes, respiratory difficulty, and prolonged dying over days. Individual infected rabbits are easy to observe as they become unable to flee; many are found by people who want to help but cannot. The welfare impact of mass rabbit mortality events extends beyond the infected individuals to the predators and scavengers that depend on rabbits as a primary food source. Population-level declines have reduced food availability for wide-ranging predators at landscape scale.