With Scraggly Habitat Disappearing, So Is a Rabbit

DURHAM, N.H. - Developers and farmers in the Northeast hoping to unload overgrown parcels of land may come to rue the day that John Litvaitis dropped his study of bears and took up with the New England cottontail.

Mr. Litvaitis, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of New Hampshire, has conducted several studies suggesting that the rabbit's prospects for longterm survival are waning. As land covered with scraggly second-growth turns into subdivisions or even into forests without scrub for cover, the near-sighted cottontail is increasingly forced into the open, where it often sees predators too late to escape, he says.

Relying in large part on Mr. Litvaitis's research, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service is methodically moving toward designating the rabbit as an endangered or threatened species. With it would come a host of protections, mandatory field surveys and areas identified as critical habitats from southern Maine to western Connecticut.

Despite occasional headlines in local newspapers ("Bunny on the Brink," declared The Sunday Citizen of Dover and Laconia, N.H.), the potential listing and its economic implications have not yet sunk in, said Michael Amaral, a biologist with the wildlife agency. Comments on the first public notice that the New England cottontail is being considered for the endangered list - known as a "90-day finding" - have been sparse, Mr. Amaral said. [The comment period ended Aug. 30.] Two things may explain why most New Englanders, even state planning officials in New Hampshire and Rhode Island, remain largely oblivious. First, the endangered species list and its constraints have touched New England only lightly over the years. Most vertebrate species listed in the region are whales, fish and shorebirds, whose protections involve little inconvenience, like a ban on raking seaweed off the beach during the Piping plover's nesting season.