White-sided jackrabbit (Lepus callotis) | ESA status: petitioned for listing

White-sided jackrabbit facts

The white-sided jackrabbit is almost exclusively nocturnal, hiding in stands of grass by day to avoid its predators. The jackrabbits don’t lack for company, however. Male and female jackrabbits usually travel together in pairs and rarely separate, even after breeding.

The jackrabbit has a pretty consistent meal plan; 99 percent of its diet is grass. But it has one trick to vary its diet; it is the only jackrabbit known to dig up the bulbous tubers of nutgrass for a snack.

White-sided jackrabbit habitat

This rabbit is found in a limited portion of North America stretching from New Mexico’s bootheel to Oaxaca, Mexico, along the eastern flank of the Sierra Madre Occidental. In the United States, its range is confined to an area of 46.3 square miles in New Mexico’s bootheel, in southern Hidalgo County. It is rarely seen in the United States, in part because there are fewer than 100 left, down from more than 300 in the late 1970s. It is likely gone altogether from one of the valleys it used to inhabit (the Playas Valley), and hangs on in just a single, confined area in the Animas Valley.

What are the threats to the white-sided jackrabbit?

This “handsome hare” (as Aldo Leopold described it) is an indicator of grassland health, as it needs pure stands of grass. Lacking this habitat, it disappears, replaced by the black-tailed jackrabbit, which does better than its cousin in degraded grasslands. Degraded grasslands are not in short supply due to a combination of livestock grazing, drought, climate change, and other factors. Researchers in Mexico estimate that the white-sided jackrabbit will lose some 60 percent of its range by 2050, thanks to climate change.

An increasing threat in the U.S. is road mortality due to collisions with Border Patrol vehicles. One scientist has warned that this threat alone could cause the species to vanish from the country.

What WildEarth Guardians is doing to preserve the white-sided jackrabbit

Despite the bleak outlook for this rabbit’s future, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refused to list the white-sided jackrabbit under the Endangered Species Act. We are challenging the refusal of the Service to protect this imperiled jackrabbit and will continue to fight for its survival.