Utah’s pygmy rabbit file holds exactly two records, both from Rich County in the state’s northeast corner, one from May and one from July 2024. That’s a startlingly thin showing for a rabbit in a state carpeted with sagebrush, and it says far more about how rarely anyone looks for this animal than about how scarce it truly is.
A rabbit married to sagebrush
The pygmy rabbit is the smallest rabbit in North America, under a pound full-grown, and it lives nowhere without big sagebrush. Sage is both pantry and shelter: in winter, when other green food vanishes, sagebrush makes up nearly the whole diet. It’s also one of only two North American rabbits that digs its own burrows, which ties it to deep, soft soil beneath tall, old sage. The Bear Lake valley and the Bear River Range foothills hold exactly that mix, and the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache backcountry offers more of the same.
Why so few records?
Pygmy rabbits are active on and off around the clock, keep within a quick dash of cover, and don’t advertise themselves the way a jackrabbit does. They also live in country with few people and fewer cameras. Utah’s western basins hold mile after mile of suitable-looking sagebrush that has never produced a verified record, and an empty spot on the map there is not evidence of an empty hillside.
Status in Utah
NatureServe ranks the pygmy rabbit S3, vulnerable, in Utah, and it’s native here. Sagebrush country is under pressure from wildfire, invasive cheatgrass, and conversion across the Great Basin, and a rabbit that can’t live without sage feels every acre of that change. Two records can’t track a trend, but each new verified sighting from Utah’s sage country adds a dot where the map is nearly blank.
Full species profile
