Critically Endangered
Riverine rabbit
Bunolagus monticularis
Riverine rabbit is a mammal in the family Leporidae (order Lagomorpha) — Bunolagus monticularis, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to South Africa.
Appearance
The riverine rabbit has an adult head and body length of 33.7 to 47.0 centimetres (13.3 to 18.5 in), and typically has a dark brown stripe running from the lower jaw over the cheek and upwards towards the base of the ears, and a white ring around each eye. The nuchal patch (the section of fur on the nape of the neck to the base of the ears), as well as the limbs and lower flanks, are rufous in colour. The underside and throat are cream-coloured.
Range and habitat
The riverine rabbit lives in riverine vegetation on alluvial soils adjacent to seasonal rivers. It prefers areas of dense vegetation in river basins and shrubland. The soft alluvial soils of the river basins allow it to create burrows and dens for protection, breeding young, and thermoregulation. It is the only African rabbit known to construct its own burrows.
Plans to protect the remaining populations have been criticized, with experts claiming that a large part of the remaining land that can support the rabbit is outside the area being preserved for it. Efforts have been made to form agreements with and educate landowners to ensure that certain measures are taken to help and reduce harm to rabbit populations, though as of 2018 few private reserves or protected areas overlapped regions where the riverine rabbit is present.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Riverine rabbits are solitary and nocturnal. The breeding season takes place between August and May, wherein females will make a grass- and fur-lined nest in a burrow, blocking the entrance with soil and twigs to keep out predators.
When grasses are available during the wet season, they are the rabbit's preferred food, but most of the time its diet is restricted to the flowers and leaves of dicotyledons in the Karoo. It is nocturnal and herbivorous, and its diet consists of grasses, flowers and leaves, most of that are dicotyledons.
In crisis
It is classified a critically endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The most recent estimates of the species' population range from 157 to 207 mature individuals, and 224 to 380 total. This contributes to its status as critically endangered, along with habitat loss from agricultural development, soil erosion, and predators. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classified it as critically endangered in 2002.
In 2016, the species was estimated to have a population of 157 to 207 mature rabbits and up to 380 overall, that continues to decline. This species' population is divided into several isolated groups, about 12 in total, all with less than 50 rabbits in each.
Riverine rabbit is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Riverine rabbit, Wikidata item Q300964. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
