Britain’s Rabbit Pandemic

Rabbits are vanishing from the British countryside, and most people haven’t noticed. The few who have? Many are more concerned about what’s for dinner than the individuals disappearing from our fields, forests, and hedgerows.

A deadly new strain of rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHDV2) is sweeping across Europe and is now likely claiming lives in the UK. This virus doesn’t wound - it eliminates. Up to 100% of those infected die. One moment they’re grooming, foraging, raising families - the next, they’re gone.

In Suffolk, the collapse has been so stark that hunters can’t find any rabbits to kill. The Wild Meat Company ran out of rabbits in February. That’s when this became a story - when the supply chain broke, not when thousands of lives ended.

This isn’t just about those confined to hutches or bred for profit. This virus targets wild rabbits, hares, and even endangered lagomorphs like the New England cottontail. Entire ecosystems are affected, from foxes and pine martens to birds of prey, who depend on rabbits for food. But the loss of sentient lives alone should be reason enough to care. Instead, people are mourning an empty dinner plate.

Rabbit haemorrhagic disease was first identified in China in the 1980s. Since then, human activity has helped it spread globally. The new variant - RHDV2 - is even more contagious. No cure, no treatment, and no hope for those living in the wild. The virus attacks the liver, causes internal bleeding, neurological failure, collapse, and death - sometimes in hours. Others suffer seizures, laboured breathing, and bleeding from the mouth, nose, or eyes before they finally stop moving.

There is no mercy in this. No peaceful fade. And the virus doesn’t go away. It clings to surfaces, survives on fur, claws, boots, and breeze. Even the insects who feed on the dead can carry the virus to someone else. There is no safe place.

Companion rabbits can be vaccinated, and that’s the advice from the British Rabbit Council. But the free living ones - those whose families are being wiped out with no witnesses, no protection, and no headlines - are being told to just “wait it out.” Their survival depends on enough of them having a genetic resistance to rebuild their population. That’s the entire plan. Not protection. Not habitat restoration. Just wait, and maybe enough will be left alive to recover.

While families are being decimated, the rabbit farming industry continues. Rabbits are still being bred, confined, mutilated, sold, worn, hunted, and eaten. Still used as props for Easter. Still confined to cages for cosmetics and chemical testing. Still seen as products.

So let’s not pretend this disease is a tragedy we had no part in. When rabbits are treated as commodities, their safety doesn’t matter. Their freedom doesn’t matter. Their deaths only matter when they impact the supply chain. RHDV2 may be viral, but the root cause is our mindset.

This is the same mindset that causes and accelerates pandemics. Commodifying living beings, crowding them together in unnatural conditions, trafficking them across borders, exploiting them for profit - it creates the perfect storm for disease. And when the consequences arrive, we still see the victims as the problem.

In 2016, RHDV2 killed hundreds of companion rabbits in Britain in just six months. The same virus now quietly tears through free living populations, and the response is indifference. No nationwide alert. No government funding. No emergency conservation effort. Just silence - until the flesh supply runs out.

Let’s say what needs to be said: rabbits are not ours. Not to breed, not to sell, not to kill, not to decorate our plates or our wardrobes. They are not pests. They are not property. They are someone. They form bonds. They communicate. They raise young. They dig homes. They mourn.

And right now, they’re dying in plain sight.

We are witnessing another road to extinction and calling it unfortunate instead of unacceptable. We called it “natural” when myxomatosis, a virus introduced by humans, killed 99% of the rabbit population in the 1950s. We called it “management” when people trapped, poisoned, and shot survivors. We called it “pest control” when entire families were gassed in their burrows. Now we call it a “wave of fatalities.” At no point do we call it what it is: the predictable outcome of supremacy and indifference.

There is nothing natural about what’s happening. It’s the result of decisions - systemic, historical, and ongoing. Rabbits are not disposable. They are not a failed product line. They are individuals being wiped out while we keep digging for excuses to continue using them.

Some say there’s nothing we can do. That we just have to let nature take its course. But nature didn’t start this. We did.

And as always, the victims are left to pay.