Their valuable place in the food web (as well as human threats such as habitat loss, trapping and cars) means they often don’t live long, but most live somewhere between one and nine years.

How long do wild rabbits live?Īs critical members of our ecosystem, rabbits form underground burrows that strengthen our soil health and they serve as a food source for many larger predators. Sometimes, by doing nothing and letting nature take its own course, the homeowner sees the same result as they might from trying to 'control' rabbits. Given the many predators who make meals of rabbits, their populations can rise and fall dramatically over the course of a year. Here today, gone tomorrow is one way to describe rabbits in suburbia. Yards, parks, playgrounds and office parks, often with small natural buffers in between, have lots of edges between small areas of different habitats that rabbits love.

This love of edges means they love our suburbs. In fact, they are rarely found in dense forests or open grassland. Cottontails like to live at the edges of open areas. There are several species of wild rabbits-most are Eastern cottontail rabbits-who live across most of North America. Why are there so many rabbits in my neighborhood?

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