West Virginia holds some of the best remaining country for the Appalachian cottontail, and the state’s 50 records sit exactly where a mountain rabbit should. Most cluster in Pendleton and Grant counties in the Allegheny highlands, led by Potomac Wildlife Management Area, with smaller numbers from Dolly Sods Wilderness, the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area, and Monongahela National Forest.
A rabbit of thickets, not fields
Unlike its lowland cousin the eastern cottontail, which favors open field edges and farm country, the Appalachian cottontail keeps to dense cover: heath balds, rhododendron and laurel thickets, bramble tangles, and young regrowing forest on high slopes. It rarely strays far from that shelter, feeding on grasses and forbs in summer and switching to bark, twigs, and buds in winter. The Dolly Sods plateau and the high ground around Spruce Knob, some of the loftiest terrain in the state, hold the mix of heath and young conifers this rabbit prefers.
A short season in the open
West Virginia’s reports concentrate from May through July, when breeding is underway and newly independent young begin feeding near cover. The rabbits are active in every season and do not hibernate, but in the colder months they stay tight against dense vegetation, and a winter rabbit in a high-country thicket is easy to walk past. Telling this species from an eastern cottontail takes care; habitat and elevation are often the best first clues, since a rabbit in a lowland field is far more likely to be the latter.
Status in West Virginia
NatureServe ranks the Appalachian cottontail S3, Vulnerable, in West Virginia, and the species is native to the state’s highlands. Globally the IUCN lists it as Near Threatened, giving it more conservation weight than most of the state’s rabbits and hares.
Full species profile
