THE BUNNIES OF UVIC or BEWARE THE RABBIT PEOPLE

Jul 3
10 min read

Pet rabbits, primarily domesticated European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus), had been abandoned on the local university campus for decades. You know, as one does. Those unsterilized mammals of multiplicative renown did, well, what they do. In no time there were nearly two thousand residing on the campus and its surrounding lawns, gardens, and forests. They truly became part of the landscape and a notable part of campus life. People didn’t just like them but you could always spot students, encircled by a dozen rabbits, sharing the vegetables from their lunch.

Of course, the abundant birds of prey, and probably raccoons and coyotes too, didn’t mind any of this. Campus biology lab lore tells that the first deposits were all white-haired, Easterbunny-like rabbits and that over thirty years natural selection had its way and brown, grey, and black-haired varieties, the fittest as it were, flourished as the eagles, owls, and others more easily picked off the ones in stark contrast with their backgrounds. I don’t know if that’s true but it sounds good.

On that thought, my only strong recollection of the campus buns is a terrible one. I had the unfortunate experience of being in an office in a small building surrounded by trees when the most terrible screaming ensued just out the window. I couldn’t figure out what was happening and then went outside to discover a raven, red in beak and claw, had caught a little guy, taken him into the canopy of a tree, and was doing the things large corvids do to little mammals. The worst of it went on way too long, so long that I was trying to figure out how to end it. It was intense. Obviously. I’m still talking about it.

So, feathered folks, like human folks, didn’t just tolerate the rabbits but generally loved them. Who did mind, however, were the owners and occupants of the many buildings these fuzzy diggers had spent decades undermining. The invasive introduction also eventually had a devastating impact on many local and ornamental plants. And UVic had been forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars to build impenetrable fencing to protect, among other things, their prized rhododendrons. So, eventually, around 2006, groundskeepers and the department of planning and sustainability had just had enough.

As institutions do, in 2007 the university announced it was establishing a rabbit taskforce. You gotta study the issue for a year and come up with a diversity of potential solutions, obviously. But within no time the first rabbit controversy broke out. The Environmental Studies Student Association (ESSA) wasn’t having any of it. Abe Lloyd, a grad student and teaching assistant (my guy), wrote a little essay in the group’s monthly publication (ESSENCE) titled, “Cook up a pot of rabbit restoration stew”. The piece included instructions for killing, preparing, and cooking a rabbit. Abe argued for this approach on common sense, ethical, and environmental and grounds.

People, as you can imagine, lost their minds. An animal protection officer from the BC SPCA spoke to the local paper, insisting Abe's article was outrageous, recommended charges, and asked the university to ensure their students understand that injuring or killing a rabbit was neither humane nor legal. They also insisted that spaying and neutering the animals before rehoming them was the only conceivable way for UVic to resolve its lamentable predicament. But this newspaper article, just reporting the facts, only served to fan the flames and the paper and its Letters-to-the-Editor section swiftly became inundated with outrage. One comment I appreciated was in response to the SPCA officer, noting “Legislation under the BC Wildlife Act offers little or no protection for Class C animals, under which the European/domestic rabbit is categorized. The Criminal Code of Canada regarding animal cruelty is weak, with a number of conditions and clauses attached to it, as is the BC ‘Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ Act. It is ‘illegal to hunt, take, trap, wound, or kill rabbits in a manner prohibited by law’ on private land, unless permission is given, but the University is unlikely to pursue any action, either.”

With all this controversy, the university was no longer doing the whole taskforce thing but instead shifted to a public relations footing. Now they were pursuing an "awareness campaign" aimed at shifting popular opinion. Suddenly the school was busily publishing everywhere things like “Although many people on and off-campus enjoy the presence of the rabbits, their activities can have a significant impact on human health and safety (the risk of catastrophic injury to athletes from rabbit holes, for example, or disease spread by rabbit feces), and on plants and property.” The animals went from fluffy friends to dangerous vermin who kill and maim our star athletes while causing automobile and cycling accidents and littering roads with their mangled and flattened corpses.

From there the institution declared it was also seeking community assistance for dealing with their problem. They shifted from “We’re gonna have to solve this” to “We encourage the public to offer reasonable solutions, otherwise we’ll have to deal with it. We don't want to have to deal with it. Don’t make us deal with it!” Only one proposal came in: to use The Rodenator. Its manufacturer described the system as "delivering a precisely measured mixture of propane and oxygen into the tunnel or burrow of invasive pests. This mixture is then detonated by the operator, causing an instantaneous underground shock wave of concussive force that eliminates the pests and in some (species specific) cases collapses some of the existing tunnel structure thus preventing immediate reinfestation." They have quite the TV ad...

In December of 2009, UVic then conducted a pilot project. (Institutions gonna institution, I suppose.) They hired Common Ground, a wildlife damage mitigation company, to implement a short-term, small-scale study of non-lethal methods for rabbit control. The plan was to capture just 150 animals, sterilize them, remove them from campus, and see them rehomed. The rabbit activist community applauded the university for taking such a reasonable approach. But after three months, the pilot project had cost $18,000, resulted in the capture of only 51 bunnies, 10 of which were able to find a new home, resulting in 41 being sterilized but returned to campus grounds (and their vast network of caves under the library and faculty lounge). The cost, logistics, and time required for humanely dealing with the rabbits was so onerous that the pilot project was declared a resounding failure.

In May of 2010, with exams over and no students to be found, campus authorities sought a Ministry of Environment permit to begin a mass cull. They offered a press release arguing that they were left with no choice and had to immediately respond to the multidimensional human health and safety catastrophe that they’d let brew for 30 years. But in an attempt to make everyone happy they also proposed a new hybrid strategy. Like many campuses, UVic is divided into sections and staff decided to establish certain sections as rabbit-free zones and other areas as suitable for a small number of permanent rabbits residents — which, obviously, is beyond absurd.

Not only did the news make the national press but, of course, Susan Vickery of EARS (Earthanimal Humane Education and Rescue Society) and her friends got wind of what was taking place, printed thousands of leaflets about the ensuing campaign of murder and spread those all over (with a focus on the tourist sections of town), while invited their friends from Vancouver and elsewhere to join in the fun. They also took their case to the BC Supreme Court for an injunction to halt the killing or at least to buy them time to find homes for the bunnies. The activists also started showing up on campus and messing with the rabbit traps and fighting with the trappers. The alt news in the region, like Vancouver Media Co-op, set about running exposés like, Killing the campus rabbits - debunking the disinformation of the University of Victoria: an analysis of the administration cover-up of the killing of abandoned domestic rabbits on campus.

The judge did grant a temporary injunction, resulting in a mad scramble to figure out how to catch, move, and manage more than a thousand wee buns. Eventually permits from the Ministry of Environment were granted, allowing 400 animals to be moved north, to a sanctuary in Coombs, BC (the village up-island with goats on their roofs) and another 1,000 to go south to, of all places, Texas. And by the end of the summer, cars, trucks, minivans, and buses full of rabbit activists and animal rights folks with pet carriers began making the voyage from Vancouver to Victoria to pick up rabbit-loads. One recalled, “We discovered something like 67 rabbits will fit in a Dodge Caravan.” They also said it was the second largest ever animal rescue in North America.

By March 1st, 2011, the campus was said to be rid of rabbits. But then, as the Canadaland podcast episode on this whole affair notes, “this is kinda where the story gets crazy.” 600 rabbits went north to what was a parrot sanctuary, Greyhaven Exotic Bird Sanctuary, north of Nanaimo. In no time, the rabbits, eager to escape the sanctuary, home to hundreds of large, loud birds, had no trouble burrowing out of their enclosures, quickly inundating the town and surrounding area. The rabbits really liked one woman’s horse farm, that of Barbara Smith, who would become known as “The UVic Bunny Murderer”.

Returning from a trip, Barbara approached her home along the Alberni highway to discover the road, the bird sanctuary across the way, and her whole hay field positively overrun with rabbits. As a retired lawyer, Barbara was the wrong person to have upset. Though it took her two months to acquire a copy of the ministry permit, it took her no time at all to realize Vickery and crew had, as Barbara says, “basically breached every condition.” With the approval of the ministry, and knowledge of ministry biologists — realizing they had a potential disaster on their hands — the lawyer brought in a pest control officer to shoot the nearly 100 bunnies, who she says she viewed as no different than a rat infestation eating all her horses’ hay.

Though the rabbit activists and friends across the road heard the gunshots and were able to run the pest control officer off the farm prior to completing the job, they were unable to rouse the ministry or police or any other authority because the operation was all above board. So, what did they do? Aside from vandalizing her property, splashing her gates with red paint, and getting angry calls from as far away as Australia and more, they targeted Smith through the Law Society of BC. They appealed to her colleagues, arguing that her inappropriate use of violence brought her into disrepute. In her Canadaland interview, this is where Barbara offers my favourite quote from the episode. Amazingly, she tells us that, though nothing came of the investigation into her conduct, that she was deemed perfectly within her rights, she was issued a friendly warning from her colleagues that she "should not minimize the power of the rabbit people.”

A year later there were still rabbits running amok all over Coombs, and there were a couple of break-ins at the bird sanctuary, one including a theft of rabbits and another in which dozens were killed (possibly stomped to death). With the rescue never looking like anything of the sort and finally accepting the project’s failure, Vickery choose not to renew her permits to keep the rabbits, which were by now, doubtless, disbursed across half of Vancouver Island. Still having learned nothing, Vickery sent the remaining rabbits (perhaps only a dozen at this point) to Alberta, to another animal sanctuary she owned. So that was how the Canadian portion of the rabbit rescue went. Then there was the Texas rabbits.

Inspired by a book, Noah and the Bunnies, that tells what is said to be a true tale of a one-legged pigeon who adopts and raises a litter of orphaned bunnies, a Vancouver real estate agent, Laura-Lea Shaw, refinanced her home to support the salvation of the remaining UVic rabbits. The author of the pigeon-bunny book, Georganne Adams-Lenham, happened to be the owner of the Wild Rose Rescue Ranch in East Texas. Shaw got in touch with the author, pleading for her to save the rabbits said to be otherwise destined for the big bunny forever home in the sky. On the condition that Shaw would fund their continued care and that all the animals would arrive sterilized, the ranch agreed to accept the UVic rabbits.

Then, Dodge Caravan load by Dodge Caravan load, Laura-Lea delivered hundreds of rabbits to the town of Whitehouse, Texas. A month after their arrival, the town passed an ordinance prohibiting anyone from keeping more than four animals. The police, armed and in body armour, arrived in seven or eight vehicles, by Grorganne’s account, escorting another three animal control trucks. Georganne felt attacked and sued the city but failed and was forced to up and move to another county with her animals.

But shenanigans ensued back in Whitehouse, shifting the situation on the ground, something about the city manager and the police acting inappropriately. Eventually, too, someone heard about her case, “the rabbit people” no doubt, and the seemingly unjust ordinance. A lawyer emerged to take her case to court, pro-bono. Georganne won the case and returned with UVic’s rabbits to Whithouse, where they all lived happily ever after. According to several sources, at least by 2023, there were still more than a hundred UVic rabbits going strong down in Texas.

That made them seem to me like the oldest rabbits on Earth. So, I looked it up. Pet rabbits of this species, in the home, will live 9-10 years and typically outdoors a few years less than that. The oldest recorded wild rabbit of this species is said to have lived to 12 years. So, if they were sterilized in 2010 and, presumably, no new bunnies were born, then any rabbits alive, first surviving the predators of Mystic Vale and Cadboro Bay and then out on acres of open range in Texas (what with her abundance of snakes, minks, raccoons, weasels, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, crows, hawks, owls, and eagles, not unlike here) would seem like some most miraculous buns. #BunsOfSteel! But what do I know?

The best part of this who drama is that, a decade after "rescue", folks were reporting how, with the feral domesticated rabbits gone, non-domesticated but equally invasive eastern cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus) have arrived, threatening vulnerable golden paintbrush, yellow montane violet, white-top aster, and the local Garry oak habitat. On this matter, it seems campus facility management denies the existence of any rabbits on school grounds and the school was not eager to comment when a local paper made enquiries into the matter. The paper does mention, however, that “The provincial website states that eastern cottontails can be caught or killed without permit, provided landowner permission is granted on private property.”

SOURCES

UVic, 2008 - Enjoy the rabbits, but don’t feed, touch or harass them

https://www.uvic.ca/communicationsmarketing/assets/docs/ring/archives/2008/Ring-sept08-web.pdf

Animal Advocates Watchdog, 2009 - Times Colonist: Hunting UVic rabbits is illegal, inhumane and immoral

https://www.animaladvocates.com/watchdog.pl?md=read;id=12663

Rodenator, 2009 - Rodenator Television Ad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgztUzqaL3E

Times Colonist, 2009 - UVic aims to snare rabbits on campus

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/times-colonist/20090902/281608121462867

The Globe and Mail, 2010 - UVic's rabbit population facing cull

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/uvics-rabbit-population-facing-cull/article1366424/

Vancouver Media Co-op, 2010 - Killing the campus rabbits