Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus (RHDV) causes rapid, painful death in wild and domestic rabbits. The disease has dramatically reduced European rabbit populations, cascading through ecosystems dependent on rabbit prey.
RHDV causes rapid internal hemorrhaging that, while quick in death, represents acute welfare harm for individual rabbits. The population-level decline from RHDV cascades through food webs, threatening predators like the Iberian lynx that have only one viable prey species in their range. The deliberate introduction of RHDV in Australia as biocontrol raises complex welfare questions — it reduces invasive rabbit populations while causing mass mortality events with significant individual welfare costs. Vaccination of domestic rabbits is straightforward and effective; wild population welfare requires addressing disease ecology at landscape scale.