Nature Lab

Because swamp rabbits are habitat specialists, they can’t survive just anywhere. They require mature forests that have areas of water and patches of understory with plants and shrubs. In Missouri, you can find them in the bottomland forests of the Bootheel. 

But much of their bottomland habitat has been lost to agriculture and development, resulting in fewer swamp rabbits. MDC began monitoring the species in 1991, conducting surveys at 10-year intervals and after major floods. MDC Biometrician Leah Berkman analyzed the survey data.

One dataset looked at how the rabbits responded to the Birds Point-New Madrid levee breach in 2011 and extreme flooding in that same area in 2018 and 2019. The rabbits did come back after the flooding, but Berkman also wanted to see if they used one side of the levee more than the other. 

“The difference was a bit counterintuitive,” she said. “The side that gets flooded more — the unprotected side — had a higher detection rate, which likely corresponds to a higher abundance of swamp rabbits.”

Berkman explained that even though the protected side of the levee floods less frequently, that side is more developed and has smaller, scattered patches of suitable habitat, whereas the unprotected side has more forest and features that the rabbits need. 

The 10-year surveys cover the full range of swamp rabbit habitat in southeast Missouri and assess the same sites each time. The most recent survey was completed in 2022. 

“We found that there’s been a three-county range expansion,” Berkman reported, “so they’re expanding back into the places that they were years ago along the Mississippi River … and occupancy levels were still high in other areas.”

The rabbits may be responding to positive habitat changes that happened between the last survey and this survey, she said. 

MDC thanks its partners at Southeast Missouri State University and Southern Illinois University Carbondale for assisting with the surveys and private landowners for granting access to their property.

At a Glance

Swamp rabbits can be hard to spot, so during surveys biologists look for the rabbits’ latrines — piles of droppings on top of logs and rocks. While this survey method does not show the number of individual rabbits, it does show whether swamp rabbits are present. Areas with more latrines have more rabbits. 

Swamp rabbits are considered an indicator of healthy bottomland habitat, so the presence of swamp rabbits can signify good habitat for other bottomland species as well.