Swamp rabbits earn their name. This cottontail relative needs standing water and dense wetland cover, habitat that Mingo National Wildlife Refuge, Big Oak Tree State Park, and Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge all provide in southeastern Missouri’s bottomland swamp country. That corner of the state sits near this rabbit’s northern range edge, and NatureServe lists it S2, Imperiled, in Missouri, a real conservation flag even though the species is secure rangewide.
Only 20 records exist for the whole state, and half of them fall in March, but a spike built from so few sightings could easily be a fluke of who went looking that spring rather than a true seasonal pattern. With numbers this thin, honest is the best word for what the record shows: presence confirmed, but not much else.
Full species profile
