Tularinia and the New England Cottontail Rabbit

The eastern cottontail, not kidding, was imported from the Midwest at the end of the 1800s to the islands for sport so that people could hunt them. Most of the cases of Tularinia in the United States come from Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and that's where those rabbits were imported from to Massachusetts for sport. That's what happens when you introduce a non-native species into your environment. And they've out-competed the New Englandcottontail rabbit, and so now we have a lot more Tularinia on Martha's Vineyard.