Desert cottontails, like this healthy animal, are susceptible to a new virus. By Erik StokstadA deadly virus is spreading quickly among wild rabbits in southwestern North America, threatening populations and possibly endangered species.
Last week the virus, which causes a hemorrhagic disease, reached Southern California.“The outlook right now is so unbelievably bleak,” says Hayley Lanier, a mammologist at the University of Oklahoma. “We’re simply left to watch the wave spread out and worry about imperiled species in its path.”Rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus first spread worldwide in the 1980s, devastating domestic rabbit populations in China and Europe.