Eight endangered New England cottontail rabbits released into Scarborough Marsh late last month are thriving, according to a pleasantly surprised Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Six of the rabbits were released on March 22 and two more on March 29.

Usually, cottontails are introduced to new habitats during the summer months.

There are about 300 New England Cottontails in Maine. Contributed / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

“We were a little concerned releasing rabbits so early,” Cory Stearns, a small mammal specialist and lead cottontail biologist for the state, said Wednesday. “We thought we’d lose a couple in the first two weeks, but we have a volunteer intern who has been monitoring them at least twice a week. As of Monday, they were all still alive.”

That’s impressive because there are always challenges in introducing animals to new habitats in general, Steans said.

“Any time we move animals from one location to another … there’s often a high mortality rate associated with that,” he said.

The marsh had been a naturally occurring cottontail habitat up until 2010, but after that they couldn’t be found there, Stearns said.

There are roughly 300 cottontails in the state. Only 13,000 cottontails are still alive in New England, mainly in southern Maine, southern New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York, east of the Hudson River, according to newenglandcottontail.org.

There is reason to believe that the cottontail population will grow through efforts like the release in Scarborough.

In a similar effort at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm in September 2021, the IFW released four cottontail rabbits. Stearns estimates that there are now 25 at the reserve.

“At this point, we’re four to five weeks out, so they all made it through that initial, critical stage,” Stearns said of the Scarborough rabbits. “We could have baby rabbits on the ground very soon.”

Reporting the sighting of an endangered species is of great help, Stearns said. To report the sighting of a New England cottontail rabbit, visit maine.gov/ifw and go to their “Rabbit Sightings” page.