Recent News

By Ethan Genter, Cape Cod Times

For decades the federal government dropped bombs on Nomans Land. These days, it is dropping off something a little fluffier on the small island off the coast of Aquinnah: bunnies.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials ferried 13 New England cottontails through Vineyard Sound and released them on the 628-acre island wildlife refuge, which was once a naval bombing site.

By Tanner Stening, Cape Cod Times

MASHPEE, MA — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Northeast Regional Fire program, in collaboration with other agencies, will conduct a series of controlled burns this spring on the Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge and on property at the Falmouth Rod and Gun Club.

By Edward Ricciuti

Connecticut DEEP and WMI biologist Lisa Wahle is quoted extensively in an article in the Spring 2019 Upland Almanac. The article, by writer Edward Ricciuti, is reprinted here by permission. (Click on the attachment below to read the piece.) Ricciuti clearly and convincingly makes the point that creating habitat for New England cottontails has the potential to help ruffed grouse in all six states where NEC live – and where local grouse populations have plummeted over the last 50 years as young forest habitat has dwindled.

By Todd McLeish for ecoRI

More rare New England cottontails were raised at Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence and the Queens Zoo in New York City and released into the wild than ever before, according to conservation officials. The success is a positive sign for populations of the region’s only native rabbit, which had declined precipitously in recent decades because of habitat loss, hunting, and competition with the introduced eastern cottontail.