Using internet search engines to assess spatial and temporal crop damages caused by European rabbit in Spain

Abstract

The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is native to the Iberian Peninsula, where it plays key ecological roles, and is an important small game species. However, as occurs in most of the countries where the species was introduced, rabbits are regarded as pests in many Iberian regions, causing damage to crops and infrastructures. In this study, our main goal was to explore rabbit damage in Spain spatially, and temporally. We identified cases of rabbit damage by using Google search engine. In particular, we searched for terms that stemmed from the following keyword combinations (in Spanish): rabbits and pest, rabbits and damage, rabbit and crops, and rabbit and overpopulation. According to our results, rabbit damage occurred in northern, central and southern Spain. In addition, online reports of rabbit damage increased notably from 2004 to 2010; ~90% of the records were dated between 2007 and 2009. This suggests that rabbits could have recovered in some areas after the rabbit population crash caused by haemorrhagic disease at the end of the 1980s. There were two main peaks of rabbit damage records in spring and summer, coinciding with the main period of crop growth and the highest rabbit abundance in the year, respectively. Most records obtained through our searches referred to rabbit damage to vineyards and cereal crops. These results suggest that conflicts between farmers and other stakeholders over rabbit management could occur across wide geographic areas in Spain and that they may have increased in recent times.