ITHACA,N.Y.(WENY)-- Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease has been rapidly spreading across the western half of the United States.  

The disease is extremely hardy and can survive on dry cloth for up to one hundred days, survive freezing and thawing and last months on dead rabbit carcasses. The disease can have a hundred percent mortality rate and rabbits have a tendency to hide the fact that they are sick as a defense mechanism, which makes it very challenging to determine if a rabbit has the disease. 

RHD was originally identified in 1984, in the Jiangsu Province of China, where it managed to kill around one hundred and forty million rabbits. Soon after, the disease made its way across Asia, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Middle East. There were only a few cases in the United States during this time and they were contained rather quickly; but many rabbit goods, such as, meat, fur and live rabbits were coming from outside of the United States and it was not until the year 2000 that the U.S.D.A became concerned about the disease. 

Rabbits are the third most popular domestic house pet and the U.S.D.A estimates that there are more than 6.7 million pet rabbits but this number could be convoluted because it is not taking into account the rabbits that are raised for food. 

There was a vaccine made to combat RHD and it was manufactured in New Jersey, but Krysten Schuler, Wildlife Disease Ecologist at Cornell University, said the vaccine is not allowed to be used in the United States for good reason. 

“So they are starting to investigate the opportunity to use the vaccine, the problem is that we don't know the efficacy of that yet,” said Schuler. “It has not been tested on wild species and in some situations if these species have not been tested through rigorous trials, you could actually do more harm by administering the vaccine and make the animal more susceptible.”

When the vaccine was invented to combat RHDV1 in the early 2000’s it helped to stop the disease for a short amount of time across Europe, but then in 2010 the virus had mutated into what we are seeing today, RHDV2. 

This virus has barely affected the Eastern United States but by the look of how it has spread in the past, it seems inevitable that New York will deal with this rabbit pandemic eventually. 

While RHD is at large people that use rabbits for hound training, feeding other animals or are involved in fur trade need to be very cautious. Schuler said it would be wise to not handle any wild rabbits or rabbit carcasses at this time and if you do come in contact with a wild rabbit make sure to wash your clothes and hands immediately after.