Rabbits wreak havoc on farms City looks to stem 'out of control' population

By Matthew Hoekstra
Staff Reporter
Richmond Review
Jun 15 2006

Farmer Bill Zylmans has farmed Richmond all his life and never seen anything like it: rabbits bounding freely through his fields, digging up seeds and munching on whatever vegetables they can sink their teeth into.

“Years ago we never saw rabbits in the wild or on the farms,” he said. “They’re out of control.”

Rabbits, which have called the Richmond Nature Park home for years, have now spread to the southwest corner of Richmond.

Zylmans said they’ve been destroying lettuce, cabbage and other vegetables and have now overtaken an eight-acre pumpkin field by digging up seeds and eating them.

He estimates his losses in that field alone at $30,000.

“I’ve been totally at a loss for what (to do). I’ve never had this experience before.”

The Sharing Farm at South Dyke, which grows vegetables for the Richmond Food Bank, has also been hit hard this spring by hairy critters.

The Sharing Farm’s Mary Gazetas said crop damage due to rabbits is much worse this year than last.

Gazetas said volunteer farmers have tried several methods of stemming the problem. Last year they tried inflatable snakes and owls and this year they laid a cloth over the seeds and plants—but the rabbits are eating through it.

“It’s reached a point where you just have to do something about it or we’ll lose everything,” she said.

Coun. Harold Steves called on the city this week to do something about it.

“The population has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and now it’s damaging crops.”

Steves said the city’s role in controlling wild animals has been limited to trapping and relocating beavers, which were building dams across drainage canals and flooding fields in East Richmond.

According to one farmer, city staff are also going to be trapping and relocating the rabbits.

Most rabbits have an average lifespan of seven to 12 years. Females have the ability to reproduce every month, yielding litters as large as 10.

Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Animals Richmond branch manager Kim Marosevich said there’s a large population of wild rabbits indigenous to the Lower Mainland that are a problem for farmers.

But the real issue, she said, is the release of pet rabbits into the wild.

Marosevich said people have come to the SPCA shelter having witnessed a rabbit being set free, as some pet owners—seeing other rabbits running free—dump their pets in Richmond after discovering the effort and cost in keeping them.

In order for the SPCA to take any enforcement action against those owners, they must be caught in the act and the SPCA must find a sympathetic judge.

“That tends not to be the biggest fish that everybody has to fry in the justice system, so it is difficult,” said Marosevich.

Life expectancy in the wild is dismal, as most pet rabbits become food for coyotes, raccoons, owls and hawks. But some survive long enough to have babies.

Therein lies the problem, said Marosevich. While owners of dogs and cats are getting more and more accustomed to spaying and neutering their pets, rabbits don’t get the same treatment.

Rabbit welfare groups and the SPCA have argued pet stores that sell rabbits should spay and neuter them—or not sell them at all.

The Richmond shelter has 25 rabbits. The SPCA keeps its adoption fee low, $50, which covers the cost of spaying or neutering.

Although sympathetic to the farmers’ plight, Marosevich said a cull of the rabbit population in Richmond is only a short-term solution. She said the city could set a precedent for other municipalities in enacting a bylaw around the sale of rabbits.

“As long as we have people contributing to the feral and the domestic population in Richmond, it’s going to be a chronic problem in Richmond.

“We have to get a hold of those people who are producing those rabbits, who are turning them loose and stop them.”