Easter has come and gone like a warm summer’s night. I believe that’s the expression, but I could be wrong. Summer nights are fairly short so I’m sticking with it, but I digress. The point is, chocolate was hidden, eggs were painted, and pet rabbits were bought…and ultimately released. Yes, this is a troubling development that many cities have dealt with or are currently in the process of dealing with. Vancouver is the latter. Everytime around Easter, the Invasive Species Council of B.C. (ISCBC) pleads with the public to not buy cute fluffy bunnies as Easter pets and then lose interest in them and release them into the wild, which is a fair request. These rabbits are not native to B.C. as the ISCBC name indicates, and can actually pose serious problems to the city’s parks and other green spaces such as:

• Out-competing native species for food and space
• Damage ecosystems
• Introduce parasites and disease
• Overload your feed with bunny photos
• Make you cynical about Easter (if you aren’t already)
• Cause you to question your roommates pet rabbit

Bottomline, it’s a problem for Vancouver. Jericho beach is currently teeming with these fluffy, cute parasites and the problem is just compounding every year as more and more people decide to release their novelty Easter pets. It’s true, many people sadly buy rabbits as pets and then realise that these animals have decently long lifespans. Most domestic rabbits live up to 10 years. That’s a big commitment and many people come to regret their purchase and end up releasing the rabbits in public spaces. This rabbit problem gets worse when the released pets are not spayed or neutered, because, you know, they do what rabbits do. The current population of domesticated fluff balls in Jericho Beach is approximately 250. That’s a lot of rabbits, and if it is not controlled there could be some serious issues in the city’s future. Issues that other places went through hell to deal with. Places like Victoria, BC.

Cute more potentially danger critter (PublicDomainPictures / Pixabay)

Victoria had its own rabbit infestation many years ago. It was 2010 and the University of Victoria (UVic) was up to its ears in bunny shit. The campus had an estimated 1,300 rabbits living on its campus and as you can imagine, it was starting to get out of hand. Not only were there sanitation issues (i.e the rabbit shit), the wascally wabbits were causing car and bicycle accidents from darting across the roads surrounding the university. The fluffers had also started burrowing underneath the school’s buildings and compromising their structural integrity. Disaster loomed around the corner. So, the university decided it was time to take action and it was announced that there would be a cull. 

For those not familiar with the term “cull”, it simply means that the university was going to start killing the rabbits. They would be trapped and then humanely euthanized. Surely this would solve the problem! Alas, it only made things worse. The bunny fiasco at UVic can only be described as some form of Shakespearean tragedy. The second they announced the culling there was pushback from a specific group of people: Rabbit Activists of Vancouver. 

They came over in droves and started picketing and handing out flyers, which led to Uvic receiving major push back from the community. So, the university backs off, says it will reconsider the cull and tries a more diplomatic approach, they agree to work with the rabbit activists and help relocate the rabbits. And this is where the story ends for most people. Once the rabbits started leaving, so too did the media…but there is a second part. 

Animal activists doing their thing (bones64 / Pixabay)

The majority of the bunnies went up the island to the small town of Coombs, where they were stored in a (and this isn’t a joke) parrot refuge. Well, actually they were stored in an enclosure right next to the parrot refuge – apparently the rabbits and the parrots did not pair well. Neither did the residents of the town and the rabbits. You see, Coombs has a lot of farms in its surrounding area, and time after time the rabbits would escape the shabbily constructed enclosure and wreak havoc on these farms. And of course the farmers would take matters into their own hands and call exterminators. All hell broke loose and pretty quickly the town started demanding the rabbits be moved. Long story short the rabbits left and no one really knows where they are now…

Another batch of bunnies were driven down to TEXAS in a MINIVAN using CAT CARRIERS to move them. Yes, that is a factual sentence. An animal sanctuary located in Texas agreed to house them as long as the rabbit activists agreed to pay for food. But another complication came up once the rabbits got there. They started multiplying…again. It turns out that not all of the rabbits were spayed/neutered before being relocated. These rabbits would cause the same chaos as the ones in Coombs. After more local drama, rabbits were allowed to stay and now live a comfortable life on the ranch in Texas. They are still there to this day.

Minivan potentially transporting hundreds of rabbits (Michael Kappel / Flickr)

This story is a cautionary tale for Vancouver and any other town that is dealing with decades of these Easter pet drop-offs. Releasing your rabbits into picturesque parks does not mean they will have a better life. So please, the next time you take a picture with the rabbits at Jericho beach please think of the town of Coombs, and the parrot refuge, and the farmers, and the state of Texas, and the maze of rabbit tunnels underneath the University of Victoria, as well as the metres cubed of rabbit faeces in store for the parks department of Vancouver.