Why is the pygmy rabbit endangered
Endangered pygmy rabbits hop to freedom
for over one hundred thousand years one
animal has called washington's shrub
step
home you got one more rabbit and 20
years ago experts say there were nearly
16 left in washington it's our fault
that they're not here anymore
fish and wildlife biologist joanne
wisniewski leads an effort to protect
pygmies from extinction
just the short ones they're gray but
they're short
today biologists are preparing the
rabbits for release they've grown up
beside
fences and under netting to help boost
survival
all on land that started as a young
boy's vision
because i was convinced i'd seen a pygmy
rabbit when i was a child
so when peter lancaster retired from
microsoft he devoted his free time to
the endangered pygmies
scouring the shrub step of central
washington looking for colonies
then one day 16 years ago i was on cloud
nine
it was two years i've been lucky for two
years and suddenly i saw a sign i saw
pellets on the ground
but someone just bought the land and
planned to sell it i had to sort of step
in to buy it that's why
i own this section lancaster bought
nearly
1 000 acres it's now a semi wild
breeding program for pygmy rabbits
feeling really optimistic right now
wisniewski says the private land and
more than 100 volunteers how did you
catch one
like 13-year-old audrey rogerson have
made the program successful
pretty amazing and i think everybody's
just a little surprised this is their
fourth summer release the first year
they freed 100 rabbits
last summer the count was 830.
it feels pretty good now i have no
worries there's so many rabbits
they're loaded into trucks and driven a
few miles to their new home
ranching's left less than 50 percent of
their ecosystem
intact sagebrush is really all the pygmy
rabbit eats
and when they disappeared hawks and
other large predators did
too
after a quarter mile hike a few dozen
rabbits are released into plastic
burrows
their prey to nearly every wild animal
out here
but this is their best chance hopefully
we'll be successful
