Rabbits in Florida hop into a dispute

Neighbors split over lovable nuisance

An adorable scourge is causing deep divisions in one suburban South Florida neighborhood.

Nonnative domesticated rabbits are rapidly multiplying in Wilton Manors, Fla., causing some neighbors to rally around the fuzzy creatures while others are allegedly threatening to shoot the rabbits.

A resident let their pet lionhead rabbits loose as they left the neighborhood two years ago, and their descendants have spawned a community of 40 to 100 rabbits now hopping around, said Alicia Griggs, who is leading the movement to save the rabbits.

Lionhead rabbits, true to their name, have large manes of fur that keep them too warm for South Florida’s tropical climate. They can produce a litter of up to a dozen bunnies every month, but only a small number are surviving.

A nonnative domesticated animal being introduced into an ecosystem usually dies, said Frank Mazzotti, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida. But if it survives, there could be extreme ripple effects.

For instance, he said, a sudden uptick in fledgling rabbits could draw predators. “Coyotes could show up and start eating all the free food,” he said.

Not all threats are organic. Griggs said some of the animal care organizations don’t want to publicize the Florida neighborhood for fear that people will show up to snag a bunny to feed to pet snakes.

A few of her neighbors, Griggs said, want to get rid of the rabbits because they burrow into lawns to unearth cooler dirt that they lie on to beat the heat.

“We just can’t wait anymore … especially when people are threatening to kill them,” Griggs said Tuesday.

At one point, she said, the city was going to capture and euthanize the rabbits. “I couldn’t believe they’d do such a thing,” she said.

The possibility of killing the rabbits prompted her to ask the city to instead capture and rehabilitate the rabbits.

“The safety of this rabbit population is of utmost importance to the City, and any decision to involve ourselves will be certain to see these rabbits placed into the hands of people with a passion to provide the necessary care and love for these rabbits,” according to a statement released from the city by Wilton Manors Police Chief Gary Blocker.

Because these are domesticated animals that have been left in the wild, they fall in the gray area where there are no ordinances for local leaders to fall back on. No other cities had helpful policy to guide them.

“Chief Blocker continued [that] at present, there is no life safety issue related to the rabbits, as they constitute only a nuisance. The Department can continue to monitor the situation and encourage individual property owners to reach out to organizations that can capture the rabbits,” according to minutes of an April 25 meeting of the Wilton Manors City Commission.

Griggs said she is talking to a few organizations to help with the rabbits, but it will take tens of thousands of dollars to properly care for them, including spaying/neutering to halt the population boom, providing medical care, buying crates and transporting them to foster or permanent homes.

She started a GoFundMe on Monday that 22 hours later had already collected nearly $10,000.

Griggs, a real estate agent, said she isn’t a longtime animal-welfare activist nor an experienced public campaigner.

“I’d never picked up a rabbit before,” she said. Now she has five at home.

She said she wants the city to use the money leaders had planned to use to exterminate the rabbits to save them.

“I’m not even working right now because I’ve been dealing with the bunnies. It’s almost a full-time job right now,” she said.