Rabbit - Critically Endangered

With Easter approaching the German animal-aid organisation “Tierschutzbund” now heavily criticized the breeding of rabbits in feeding-lots:
>There bunnies usually are fed nothing but dry pellets. This one-dimensional diet is so bad for their digestive system it can kill a bunny.
>In feeding-lots cages are so small that bunnies can hardly move which is against their nature and causes them to grow deformed bones and scoliosis which hurts them. Also it makes them develop abnormal behavior like cannibalism, self-harm, damaging their teeth by constantly chewing on the bars of the cage, spinning – which damages and sometimes even breaks their legs – and others.
>In feeding-lots does are fertilized in a rhythm that they are to have cubs about every month which in the wild would never happen. As a result many bunnies are born too weak to survive and – however this is also due to the fact that in these tiny cages the doe never has the chance to get away from the young ones like she would in the wild – the doe shows abnormal behaviour towards her kits often killing them right after their birth.

With the Easter-holiday approaching the animal-aid organisation “Tierschutz Euskirchen” now announced their disapproval of the fact that Brandenburg is the only German federal state where peasants who breed monoculture on their fields and those who don’t are treated equally. In other states within Germany peasants who allow plants other than what they actually breed on their fields receive some kind of rewarding money for being so environmentally friendly. In Brandenburg however peasants don’t receive anything at all for being environmentally friendly and thus most peasants see no point in doing so. They exterminate any plant other than what they want to grow to sell later and want to eliminate any possibility that anything unplanned could grow there and take away the space their domesticated plants need. As a result hare has it hard to survive as these animals
firstly can’t hide too well in monoculture-fields and secondly they need wild plants to feed on…which you of course won’t find in the fields of a peasant who practices monocultures. In addition to that nobody stops the uncontrollable growing of the fox-population. Firstly you need a hunting-license for doing so, secondly most hunters find the shooting of foxes unprofitable since these days clothes that involve the fur of animals are considered unfashionable and thirdly foxes find more than enough food to survive with all these Brandenburgians simply throwing still edible food on the street. These are the reasons why in Brandenburg the population of hares is constantly declining.

At last the South African TV-channel 50I50 now published a 10 min long documentary movie about the riverine rabbit. Just type the keywords “riverine rabbit 50I50” and unless it got removed due to authority reasons you may see it.
According to the documentary movie:
>Even members of research communities say they haven’t seen more than one riverine rabbit within the past three years, which is alarming not only because this is a small number, but also because a riverine rabbit shouldn’t be alone as they live in hutches.
>Sightings are so rare that we know little to nothing about this rodent. Until recently scientists even presumed that this creature was strictly nocturnal and to be found in rocky areas, while more recent footage proves that even under normal conditions – like even if you don’t disturb them to get them into leaving their burrow – they can be active in the early morning, too. That they live in rocky areas is simply wrong! How would they dig their burrows there?
>One of the problems they have is that even if a female gets to the maximal age of 4 years in the wild, it usually can’t have more than 12 cubs within these four years.
>What most people don’t know and wouldn’t even guess is that the extensive breeding of sheep, goats and cows for milk and meat is a mayor disturbance to riverine rabbits. The cows and others disturb them, sheep-herding dogs try to catch and kill them, the growing of plants to feed cows destroys their habitat.
>Alas the riverine rabbit isn’t as fast as the wild hares and bunnies you see in the wild in Europe or America.
>Due to an increasing building of roads, many end up as road kills.
>Even illegal huntings happen.

The newspaper “Mitteldeutsche Zeitung” says that last week 15 bunnies – one buck, two does and 12 cubs – were found after somebody abandoned them in the wild in Central-Germany. As it seems the owner didn’t expect the two females to go pregnant and just couldn’t deal with all these young ones…or he initially wanted them to have offspring and later lost interest. Whatever the reason this just shows that you should always go to someone professional and ask him about the gender of your pet. Then you should probably neuter it.

This week the animal-aid organization “Tierschutz Euskirchen” received some heavy criticism for saving three huge bunnies from the butcher by buying them from him and for only now trying to find a home for these three creatures. First of all by paying the butcher they supported this system that kills bunnies like these. Instead they should try to raise public awareness of what slaughter-bunnies like these go through before they eventually die and of how unhealthy their meat is. Maybe even raising public awareness of how important bunnies were to some native cultures would do, seeing how many people idolize these cultures.
Also they probably should have searched for someone who would be interested into buying three large rodents from “Tierschutz Euskirchen” before actually getting them from the butcher without knowing what to do with them next.
—-—-—-——-
Re-upload 1: By the way you of course could also help by aiding the organisation you can read about on “http://www.sanparks.org/parks/tankwa/”. After all they try to preserve this animal’s habitat, the Karoo desert.
Re-upload 2: The riverine rabbit is the only critically endangered specimen of rabbit.
“http://www.givengain.com/cause/2347/projects/10009/” tries to save this extremely rare mammal. So do the owners of the website “http://www.ewt.org.za/WHATWEDO/OurProgrammes/RiverineRabbitProgramme.aspx”.
In addition I read in a newspaper article that now that Easter is coming soon the Swiss chocolater brand Lindt is donating 0,50€ for each sold chocolate rabbit to a conservation program.