Rabbit hemorrhagic disease has devastated wild rabbit populations in Europe and is spreading globally — with cascading welfare implications for the predators that depend on them.
Rabbit hemorrhagic disease illustrates how disease in one species ripples through ecosystems with welfare consequences for many. Individual rabbits dying of hemorrhagic disease experience significant suffering. Predators whose food supply collapses face starvation stress and reproductive failure. The cascading effects of rabbit population collapse in Iberia threaten species already critically endangered. The welfare response requires both treating the immediate disease impact — vaccination programs for domestic and wild rabbits, monitoring, and biosecurity — and addressing the ecosystem-level consequences through targeted conservation support for predator species most affected by the prey base collapse.