All about the bunny

A Cape Elizabeth inn joins an effort to save the New England cottontail rabbit from extinction.

REGION — Cape Elizabeth Town Manager Michael McGovern jokes that it was “the most over-reported story of 2011,” but unwanted attention paid to a bunny imbroglio at Fort Williams’ Park may have done some good after all.

On Monday, the Inn by the Sea, located on Route 77 in Cape Elizabeth, launched a project designed to help save the New England cottontail rabbit from extinction.

The inn will pay to rehabilitate two acres of Crescent Beach State Park situated between the inn and the ocean, converting a tangle of non-native bamboo into the natural state of brushland and berries the bunnies need to live and breed in peace from predators. In doing so, the inn joins efforts stepped up in both Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough since April, when news of the bunny’s plight, and the park’s involvement, captured public attention.

Here’s how it happened.

In late 2010, volunteers with the Fort Williams Arboretum project cleared invasive species – including sumac, bittersweet, black swallowwort and Japanese knotwood – from the Cliffside section of Fort Williams Park. An anonymous tipster alerted the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, which was quick to advise McGovern that while alien plants do indeed choke out flora and fauna native to the area, they had made safe harbor for a species in dire straits – the New England cottontail, put on Maine's list of endangered species in 2007 and a candidate for federal protection since 2006.

At the state’s behest, the town forked out $4,800 to fund a summer-long project to round up any rabbits remaining in the park and ship them to breeding grounds in Rhode Island. The next generation of cottontails would have been returned to Cape Elizabeth, but, as luck would have it, only one rabbit was ever collared, and that one, in typical Bugs-like fashion, gave his captors the slip.

“We didn’t get a chance to start trapping until pretty far into the spring,” Judy Camuso, a state wildlife biologist, said last week. “Rabbits can be difficult to catch when things green up, after which they show no real interest in the food that’s made available in traps.”

But while many watched the brouhaha from afar, not all were laughing. Almost every story that ran during and after the great bunny hunt made note of one startling statistic: Fewer than 300 of New England’s only native rabbit species are believed to exist in Maine, occupying less than 17 percent of its historic range in the state.

Rauni Kew, head of “green programs” at the 57-suite Inn by the Sea, said news coverage of the town’s imbroglio inspired inn directors to approve a plan to help save the native cottontail from extinction.

Sara Masterson, general manager of the inn – which this year was named one of the Best 500 Hotels in the world by Travel & Leisure magazine – said the work will cost her business “in the hundreds of thousands.” Still, the cost to save an animal most of her guests will never see, on land the inn doesn’t own, was not one she labored over for long.

“The beauty of Cape Elizabeth’s natural surroundings is an important part of our guest’s experience,” said Masterson. “Restoring habitat and preserving the state’s pristine environment for future generations is not only the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense. Maine’s natural environment is the magnet that attracts tourism to the state.”

Unfortunately, tourism is in part responsible for the cottontails’ plight. Kelly Boland, whose two-year-old job as New England cottontail restoration coordinator at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge is jointly funded by a host of state and federal sources, said that while 90 percent of Maine is forested, only 2 percent exists in a state needed by the cottontail. The rabbit was here before European settlers, living in the low brush along rivers. That also was the area most favored by early settlements, but it was OK, said Boland, because farmers cleared the land, often piling up brambles on the edges of fields, making new ready-made places for the rabbit to live.

But in the last 50-70 years, as the economy changed and fewer families needed to maintain their own farmland, land once kept clear was allowed to grow. And a mature forest, while it may make for inviting hiking trails and perfect postcards of “Maine, The Way Life Should Be,” is no place for a cottontail rabbit.

When a forest grows tall enough for a canopy to develop, the lack of sunlight at ground level caused the understory of vegetation to thin, leaving the cottontail at the mercy of predators. According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the area inhabited by cottontails has contracted 75 percent since 1960. Perhaps counterintuitive, the cottontail has disappeared from Vermont. Because forests in the Green Mountain State have been allowed to grow, the land, though rural, has become inhospitable for the species.

"It's not just that their numbers are down," said Camuso. “It makes it harder for the population to rebound when the range they inhabit has retracted so dramatically.”

And, Camuso said, the numbers may actually be worse that has been reported. The “300” number commonly bandied about is from the last count, conducted seven years ago. That was two years before hunting of the New England cottontail was outlawed, she said.

Habitat restoration like that being done at the Inn by the Sea can help. The inn plans to clear and burn the land, turn the soil, and burn it again. Then, in the spring, it will plant the thickets cottontails use as a defense from fox and coyotes, including raspberry, blackberry, dogwood, alder, winterberry and dewberry. Herbs and grasses such as goldenrod, clover, plantain, chickweed, wild strawberry and buttercup will also be planted as additional food sources.

Similar restoration projects have been launched elsewhere. Personnel from the Rachel Carson refuge have been called in to manage 12 acres of the Scarborough-owned Wiley Recreation Area, as well as the Libby River Farm, owned by the Scarborough Land Trust. Talks are under way to place rabbit easements on 12 acres of Cape Elizabeth’s Gull Crest Preserve, as well as on 24 acres of the Black Point Park project, if the full site is approved by Scarborough planners.

“We have other private lands that will be managed in the next year or two throughout York and Cumberland counties,” said Boland, noting that refuge officials can help private landowners obtain grant funding for management easements lasting as little as 10 or 15 years.

“The sticky wicket in all that is that the habitat is not created overnight,” Camuso said. Many of the areas being worked on now, including by the inn, might not become something cottontails will take to for five years, “best case,” said Camuso, adding that it’ll likely be 50 or more years before the native rabbit rebounds to levels that might get it off the endangered list.

“To be honest, it’s all sort of a learning process for us,” she said, “but the goal is to eventually have 25 areas of 25 acres or more, with possible links between them.”

Boland also points on that helping the cottontail also helps a wide swath of the ecosystem, given that the same habitat favored by the cottontail also is frequented by several species of shrubland birds, now in decline, as well as the spotted turtle.

“We are very excited about what is happening in Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough for the benefit of New England cottontails and other declining wildlife and hope to repeat this success across other parts of their range in Maine, and in the region,” she said.