New Mexico’s 1201 black-tailed jackrabbit records lean toward the state’s open southern half. Doña Ana, Eddy, and Hidalgo counties lead, with thick clusters at Petroglyph National Monument on Albuquerque’s volcanic west edge, City of Rocks State Park, and the Chihuahuan Desert country around Organ Mountains - Desert Peaks National Monument and Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
Built for heat and open ground
This is a hare, not a rabbit, and it lives like one. Rather than digging burrows, it rests by day in a shallow ground scrape called a form and outruns trouble instead of hiding from it, on long hind legs that can push it past forty miles per hour. Its outsized ears do double duty, catching the sound of predators and radiating body heat into the desert air, a pairing that suits the hot basins where most of the state’s records come from.
Spring and summer in the open
Counts climb from April to a June and July peak, the stretch when jackrabbits breed across the Southwest and long-legged young begin appearing in open country. As summer heat builds they shift their feeding to dawn, dusk, and night, cropping grasses and herbs while they last and turning to shrubs and even cactus pads when the range dries out.
Status in New Mexico
NatureServe ranks the black-tailed jackrabbit S5, Secure, in New Mexico, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
