Berger, Joel

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University of Montana

University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Biological Sciences Faculty Publications Biological Sciences 4-2008 Extant or Extinct? White-Tailed Jack Rabbits and Yellowstone's Food Web Joel Berger University of Montana - Missoula, joel.berger@mso.umt.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/biosci_pubs  Part of the Biology Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Berger, Joel, "Extant or Extinct? White-Tailed Jack Rabbits and Yellowstone's Food Web" (2008). Biological Sciences Faculty Publications. 79. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/biosci_pubs/79 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Biological Sciences at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Biological Sciences Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact scholarworks@mso.umt.edu. LetterExtant or extinct? White-tailed jack rabbits andYellowstone’s food webMy recent article in Oryx (Berger, 2008) has provokeda broader debate about food webs and the role of speciesalleged as missing. In this case, I had suggested that white-tailed jack rabbit Lepus townsendii had disappeared fromthe two prominent national parks, Grand Teton andYellowstone, in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of theUSA. I want to correct that notion.Since the article was published I have received at leasthalf a dozen notes from professional biologists and natural-ists, including several unmistakable photographs, whichdemonstrate that these large hares are extant in a relativelysmall corner of Yellowstone National Park. The NationalPark Service (Yellowstone) has also received numerousqueries about the status of this lagomorph. Although theService is now able to point out that the species is notlocally extinct, further information on the distribution orbiology of the hares is unavailable. As a consequence of themedia reports and, hence, public attention, the Park is nowdeveloping censuses to determine the current distributionof white-tailed jack rabbits.Given that we now know the white-tailed jack rabbit isextant in Yellowstone National Park, two questions seempertinent. Firstly, was a presumption of extirpation reason-able? Secondly, do these hares play a functional ecologicalrole? As explained in my original article, I queriedknowledgeable Park personnel and examined museumand Park historical records. In prior studies, includingone of pronghorn antelope Antilocapra americana (Bergeret al., 2006), I had even taken out advertisements in localnewspapers, hoping to spark public interest to reportwhen putatively vanishing species had last been seen. Inthe case of white-tailed jack rabbits, however, a broadersampling of people living adjacent to Yellowstone Parkwould have improved abilities to detect whether the haresstill persist.As the world’s first national park, Yellowstone continuesto generate spectacular interest in wildlife, much fuelled bypublic, media, and scientific attention on only two species:grizzly bears and wolves. However, about 250 formalresearch projects are permitted in the Park annually, manyfocused on issues unrelated to mammals. That the white-tailed jack rabbits have never been studied is not sounusual. Restrictions in the availability of funding andthe charismatic nature of some species often determineresearch choices.That said, the recent media attention on the ‘missing’white-tailed jack rabbits has now generated sufficientinterest in more than their distribution. Although nothingis known of their ecological role, the potential to find out isopportune, not just in the Park but beyond its borders. InGrand Teton National Park, where there has been littledispute about the functional loss of white-tailed jack rab-bits, interest in the potential restoration of this speciesexists. Studies to understand the population biology, ecol-ogy, and community-level dynamics of this under-studiedlagomorph are desperately needed not just in Yellowstonepark per se but, which was a major point of my article, tofurther conservation by developing a broader debate aboutecological baselines.JOEL BERGERNorthern Rockies Field Office, Wildlife Conservation Societyand Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana,Missoula, Montana 59812, USA.E-mail jberger@wcs.orgReferencesB E R G E R , J. (2008) Undetected species losses, food webs, andecological baselines: a cautionary tale from the Greater Yellow-stone Ecosystem, USA. Oryx, 42, 139–142.B E R G E R , J., C A I N , S.L. & B E R G E R , K. (2006) Connecting the dots: aninvariant migration corridor links the Holocene to the present.Biology Letters, 2, 528–531.ª 2008 Fauna & Flora International, Oryx, 42(2), 176 doi:10.1017/S0030605308042270 Printed in the United Kingdom

Extant or Extinct? White-Tailed Jack Rabbits and Yellowstone\u27s Food Web

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Extant or Extinct? White-Tailed Jack Rabbits and Yellowstone\u27s Food Web

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