Connecticut Biologists Create Habitat for the Endangered New England Cottontail

By Wiley Wood

“You can’t miss it. It’s a 57-acre hole in the forest,” says Paul Rothbart, a project manager with the Connecticut State Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.  He is giving directions to a tract of state land in Goshen that, with the aid of federal grant money, has been actively managed over the past year to make a habitat for the New England cottontail.
In the late 1990’s, wildlife biologists noticed a serious decline in the native rabbit, and concluded that the main cause was habitat loss. The New England cottontail needs relatively large patches of dense brush for cover and food, on the order of 12 to 25 acres for a stable local population, yet the general trend in New England over the past century has been either towards reforestation or development. And the New England cottontail, whose Latin name is Sylvilagus transitionalis, has no use for mature forest or suburbia.
A second rabbit, the Eastern cottontail, introduced into the area by hunting clubs in the late 1800’s, began to surpass the native rabbit by the 1960’s. At present, the odds are eight to one that the bunny you see lolloping along the edge of a field is an Eastern cottontail. Slightly larger in size, with slightly longer ears, it sometimes has a white patch on its forehead, but the field characteristics are so unreliable that DNA tests are used to distinguish the two species.

A thicket along a wet patch of road in Norfolk—just about right for a New England cottontail.

The main functional difference is that the introduced species, the Eastern, tolerates a wider range of habitats. It will venture into grasslands for herbaceous browse and can survive in smaller patches of thicket. Its eye, which is fifty percent larger than the New England’s, is thought to allow it to escape predation more easily, whether from owls and foxes or dogs and housecats.
Today, the original range of the New England cottontail, which included portions of New England and New York, has shrunk back to a few isolated outposts along the coast in Maine and New Hampshire, a few scattered populations in eastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod, and eastern New York, and two relatively large areas in Connecticut on either side of the Connecticut River valley. “A globally significant proportion of the remaining individuals of this species can now be found in Connecticut,” says Judy Wilson, a wildlife biologist with the Connecticut DEEP.
Paul Rothbart concurs: “We’re pretty much where it’s at when it comes to the New England cottontail.” And the Connecticut DEEP has applied for and won nationally competitive federal grants to create habitat for the native rabbit, on the theory that the species will rebound fairly quickly if the conditions are right. This means restoring shrub lands and thickets and creating young or early-succession forests. “They need habitat patches with dense stem counts, at least 20,000 stems per acre,” says Judy Wilson. These shrubby tracts should be within dispersal proximity of others. The idea is to form a loose skein of habitat patches near locations where the New England cottontail has been confirmed.
The logical place to start was on state land, and Rothbart has just overseen the largest habitat restoration project in Connecticut to date, on the state-owned Goshen Wildlife Management Area (WMA)., to which he has given me directions over the phone. A fully loaded logging truck is pulling out as I drive in. A double row of logs by the parking lot, the stems stacked 15 feet high, prepares me for what I am going to see.

Logs from the clearcut go to the logger in partial payment for his work.

The Goshen WMA is a long tract of land running along a hilltop near the Norfolk line. Its 848 acres dip down the sides of the hill and include some wetlands. The area by the parking lot is open grassland rising gently toward the south, rimmed with mixed hardwood forest. I make my way toward the line of trees along the field’s western edge and follow it, looking for the 57-acre hole in the forest.
The clearcut, a large swathe of mown trees that harks back visually to an earlier era in the settlement of Litchfield County, has a careful look. The stumps are cut close to the ground, the logs removed and the branches form an even cover. Brush piles dot the cleared expanse, shelter for the eventual rabbit population, and an occasional drumming log has been left for grouse. A tuft of trees stands in the center of the clearing. Already, tiny maple seedlings are putting out leaves. The ground is lush with deep-forest ferns and forbs. In three to five years this patch of former hardwood forest will have the dense stem count that the New England cottontail needs for structure and food.

A 57-acre clearcut created on state land in Goshen for cottontail habitat.

“It’s a shock if you’re not used to it,” says Paul Rothbart. “But those fifty acres didn’t provide anything that the 700 acres around them won’t continue to provide. And we’ll have an early-succession forest in addition that will make habitat for the New England cottontail and a lot of other species over the next twenty years.” Among the disturbance-dependent species he names are several warblers, including the chestnut-sided and the blue-winged, the American woodcock, grouse (hunting is permitted on the Goshen WMA), a snake and a turtle.
Because the goal of the exercise is to create habitat, not maximize gain from the sale of sawtimber, the value of the logs does not quite equal the cost of clearing the land. “Everything three inches in diameter and larger is cut down,” says Rothbart, “the branches are left on the ground to replenish the soil, and everything five inches in diameter or larger is hauled away.” These and other conditions, including building a brush pile every acre and leaving no ruts, raise the cost of the operation to the logger. In the case of the Goshen WMA, the state paid the logging outfit $10,000 to $12,000 in addition to allowing them the cut trees, a large proportion of which will be sold for firewood.
An obvious concern when making habitat for disturbance-dependent species is making a prime site for plant invasives at the same time. Rothbart points out that the DEEP is not on a mission here to eradicate invasive plants. But the state brought in a botanist to examine the Goshen site before it was logged—the one-acre tuft of trees in the center protects a colony of sharp-lobed hepatica, a species of concern—and it will monitor the site at regular intervals and manage it as needed to ensure that invasives do not increase. “At some sites, we get nothing but invasives,” says Rothbart, “but in Goshen I don’t expect we’ll have a lot of trouble with them.”
In the next phase, the Connecticut DEEP will try to help private landowners within the initiative’s focus area to create young forest habitat. Great Mountain Forest, whose 6000 acres straddle the Norfolk-Canaan line, expects to turn 35 acres on its Canaan border into a brushy tangle. The Winchester Land Trust is in discussion with DEEP over a possible 9-acre parcel. White Memorial Forest in Litchfield has a habitat restoration project in the works.
“The message that we shouldn’t fragment forest has been so thoroughly learned,” says Lisa Wahle of the Connecticut DEEP, “that cutting it down runs against the grain. But it is young forests that provide the flowers, fruits, seeds and insects that many species need.”

Sharp-lobed hepatica, a species of concern in Connecticut.

Photograph of New England cottontail courtesy of newenglandcottontail.org. Photographs of Goshen WMA and thicket habitat by Wiley Wood.