City of Nanaimo trying to encourage raptors to hunt rabbits at Beban Park<\/p>\n
Published 10:00 am Wednesday, December 17, 2025<\/p>\n
The City of Nanaimo is expanding its rabbit management measures, which include predator poles as well as cougar and coyote urine, as staff indicate the population has reached record highs.<\/p>\n
Council discussed a report on the state of the feral rabbits in the community during a meeting on Monday, Dec. 15. The report was commissioned by the disbanded feral rabbit working group in 2018 that includes the city, Vancouver Island University and Nanaimo Ladysmith Public Schools.<\/p>\n
Charlotte Davis, deputy director of parks and natural areas, told council the first key takeaway from the report is that the population of the feral rabbits is at a higher level than before the outbreak of rabbit hemorrhagic disease in 2018, which decimated the population around the community.<\/p>\n
Population surveys undertaken in the 2018 report indicate 2,049 rabbits, but warned that this is a \u201cminimum estimate\u201d as not all rabbits were likely observed during the survey and at best it may estimate 60 per cent of the population. The highest numbers were observed at Vancouver Island University and adjacent Rotary Bowl stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second key takeaway is the operational impact that this rabbit population is having on our operations,\u201d Davis said. \u201cHoles in fields which create safety risks for our users, certain infrastructure is being undermined at Rotary Bowl and Beban, the VIEX for example, and also the opportunity cost.\u201d<\/p>\n
While last year management was cost-neutral, Davis warned this was because staff were diverted from their duties elsewhere and it is \u201cnot sustainable to carry on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means that next year we have a larger challenge ahead of us because we haven\u2019t had the same level of service on our fields.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2018 report issued a series of recommended actions, including that the working group engage with the province to identify population control options available; engage with the B.C. SPCA to spay\/neuter the rabbits and then provide shelter for them; examine resources available for population control programs at specific sites; develop a communication plan on the issue; reduce attractants; share resources with neighbouring municipalities; engage with private landowners; conduct follow-up surveys; install exclusion fencing; and monitor the strategy\u2019s effectiveness.<\/p>\n
The report also recommended hiring a professional trapper to implement appropriate and humane trapping techniques with options including live-trapping and relocating the rabbits to the SPCA to be sheltered or \u201clethal removal per regulations and bylaws.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirsty MacDonald, manager of parks operations, said the city\u2019s current strategy involves spraying cougar and coyote urine to scare the rabbits away from infrastructure most at risk, as well as installing raptor poles at locations in Beban Park near the BMX track to encourage raptor predation.<\/p>\n
A staff report noted that while there are no findings on the effectiveness of the urine deterrent, there have been reports of raptors using the perch poles to hunt.<\/p>\n
Following the presentation, Coun. Hilary Eastmure requested engagement with non-profits that deal with rabbit abandonment and mitigation such as V.I. Fluffle and Rabbitats.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the various groups who have reached out to us who have different views and approaches, I think the key would be to work with our partners and engage with them \u2013 the other groups \u2013 as well to see if there is opportunity to do try something other than what we have been doing with the parks and natural area technicians,\u201d said Lisa Bhopalsingh, Nanaimo general manager for community services.<\/p>\n
Following the meeting, Sorelle Saidman, Rabbitats founder, told the Nanaimo News Bulletin that lack of communication with rescue groups has been one of the failures in Nanaimo\u2019s strategy to address the problem, but isn\u2019t the only one. Voices from rescue groups, she said, often get lost in the noise when the discussion becomes emotionally heated with letters and calls from members of the general public facing property damage and animal welfare concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever the topic of rabbits come up it is met with a big eye-roll from governments and environmentalists and it is just not working,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Saidman said Rabbitats had submitted a proposal ahead of the meeting to the City of Nanaimo to look into financial support from businesses, community groups and other levels of government, as well as possible destinations for removed rabbits with cost options. She expressed disappointment that this was not discussed during the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is just another example of [not just] our agency not being taken seriously, but rescue in general not being taken seriously and dismissed by government and there really does seem to be a divide between us, environmentalists and animal welfare groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
She warned the city\u2019s current strategy of relying on predators is a \u201cdrop in the bucket\u201d and that \u201cjust picking them off is not going to be effective\u201d as the rabbits are able to outbreed the predators.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to take all of the rabbits out of any given area, what we do, and we have done this successfully a half-dozen times at least now,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have a grid, with boundaries, and every single rabbit within that grid has to come out of the environment. We tried initially just to take some or take most, and that didn\u2019t work. If you want rabbit control, every rabbit in that area should be taken out of the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City of Nanaimo trying to encourage raptors to hunt rabbits at Beban Park Published 10:00 am Wednesday, December…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-352644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}