The omiltemi ‘missing’ rabbit that returns in the eyes of researchers more than a century later

The country offers in the open America section for its daily and global informative contribution to sustainable development. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here.

In one of the lush areas of the Sierra Madre del Sur, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, Stephen John Davies sees how a small rabbit begins to jump in front of him. The animal stops for a few moments; And the Welsh tourist takes his camera and takes the photo. It is July 2009, but the boy will not upload that snapshot to the Internet until 2019. It will soon unleash the emotions in Inaturalistmx, a portal for species observers and researchers in the area. That animal that had portrayed was an omiltemi rabbit (Sylvilagus insonus), a species that scientists believed lost and that had seen very little in the last 120 years. Since 2018, international foundations and authorities of the state of Guerrero have returned to resume interest in the species.

The omiltemi rabbit, that little mammal of just over 40 centimeters, rough, reddish hair, short ears and small and black tail – contrary to other rabbits, without that white “cotton colita” -, it was the focus of research by Consuelo Lorenzo, Alberto Almazán and Rodolfo Rodríguez, involved in a project initiated in 2018 that seeks to monitor and influence the knowledge of the species.

More than a century has passed since the American naturalist Edward William Nelson published his first descriptions of the rabbit in 1904. Then, he located it in the Omiltemi State Ecological Park, one hour from Chilpancingo, Guerrero, a high habitat, more than 2,000 meters, where the fog predominates in the cold days and the lush of the pines and oaks. In 1998, biologists had only observed five copies and there were few records of the activities of the species.

Among its predators, in addition to humans, are the Jaguarundis, or hahafelines between 43 and 63 centimeters, also in danger of extinction; Ocelotes, tigrillos, pumas and foxes. Hunting is not the only activity that affects its development, also logging, especially clandestine, and livestock activities, as well as fires. The current difficulty in conducting research or taking photos and videos goes through the complex access to the mountains in which they live, occupied by organized crime groups.

In 2018, the species aroused the interest of the American organization Rewild (chaired by actor Leonardo DiCaprio), being one of those cataloged as “losses” for a longer time in their archives. They soon formed a small team, led by Lorenzo, from the Southern Border College, Almazán, of the Institute for the Management and Conservation of Biodiversity (Immacob), and Rodríguez, nature photographer. “We started investigating, looking for information about the rabbit, on social networks, in a lot of places. And we were surprised until 2019, which uploaded a photo to the naturalistic platform. A very good photo,” says this newspaper Almazán, in reference to that snapshot of the Welsh tourist.

But that image did not change the information that was had so far, since they had to verify it with the specimen in hand. “We went to the place where it had been described for the first time (in the Sierra Madre). For security reasons, they did not let us arrive, then we did only monitoring in the lower part. We did not find the rabbit, but in the interviews we did (to the inhabitants of the area) there are indications that people did located and distinguished the two rabbits” of the territory, explains the investigator of the Immacob.

A little over a month ago, Guerrero’s Ministry of Environment published a video in which a copy was seen by jumping. “The omiltemi rabbit reappears,” said the text that accompanied the images. But, in reality, the rabbit had never disappeared. It was part of the daily landscape and the diet of the inhabitants of the area. What was lost was his scientific trace. “It has always existed, what has been missing are specialists,” says Almazán. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which in 2018 had included the rabbit in its list of threatened species, soon changed the classification to its category of “insufficient data”. It is also in the List of Danger of Extinction of the Federal Environment Secretariat (Sermanat). “There are people who came to talk about that it was mythical, who really never existed,” says the specialist in mammals.

Research has resulted in master’s degree and more deep inquiry planning. Almazán explains that they are in a refinancing phase to achieve trap cameras. Research to make the species population count will be published in the future, he says. And that would be the culmination of a scientific work that also consisted of sharing with the inhabitants of the area the need to protect this animal, as well as invite the general population to recognize the importance of this creature and its conservation.