Proceedings of the Vertebrate Pest Conference

Cottontail rabbits cause serious damage to ornamental plant production in Southern California. We used a 300-acre Southern California tree nursery as a cottontail CDFA vertebrate pest study site. We evaluated the relationship between nursery practices and the incidence of rabbit damage. GPS technology in combination with GIS software was employed to map and ascribe descriptive characteristics to the growing practices within each nursery bed. To understand the pattern of rabbit damage to irrigation, handheld GPS units were utilized by nursery staff conducting irrigation repair to assess damage caused by vertebrate pests. The waypoints taken by the irrigators superimposed on the map of the nursery had numerous benefits to the study, including demonstrating which growing conditions were most vulnerable to rabbit damage and elucidating if measures to reduce rabbit damage were successful. The same methodology may be helpful to researchers in many IPM fields.