Long Beach City College Thins Out Rabbit Herd

Long Beach City College’s legendary rabbit population, which has figured into campus politics and theatrical productions, was thinned a bit during the summer, officials said.

About 60 rabbits were removed by county agriculture workers at the request of college officials. “It was an ecological imbalance,” said Tracy O’Connell, a college spokeswoman.

The rabbits were lured into cages baited with lettuce and carrots, then were released in Harbor Regional Park, a large public park with plenty of water and vegetation in Harbor City, said Richard Wightman, deputy agricultural commissioner.

“It seemed like a good environment for them,” Wightman said. “I don’t know what else they would need.”

About a third of the college’s estimated bunny population was relocated, the first such effort since the rabbits began appearing on campus in the early 1980s. A proposal to eliminate the animals three years ago was dropped after the campus newspaper ran heated editorials against the idea, students staged demonstrations to support them and about 1,100 people signed a petition to keep them on campus.

The recent effort encountered no such opposition, despite stories in the campus newspaper, said John Taylor, acting director of support services. He attributed the lack of opposition to the decision to limit the number of rabbits being removed.

Nobody knows exactly how the bunnies got there in the first place. Veteran staff members say wild jack rabbits were seen for years on the college’s Liberal Arts campus on Carson Street, which used to be a bean field.

But about seven years ago, they say, wild rabbits began disappearing, to be gradually replaced by tame rabbits with fluffy fur of various colors.

The most popular theory is that nearby residents began abandoning their pet rabbits on campus and that the wild rabbits moved on to greener pastures, leaving the tamer brand to proliferate at a rate of about four new bunnies a month.

For years their presence on the 68-acre campus has generally been considered harmless. Much loved by students and staffers alike, the animals have been parodied by administrators wearing bunny suits in skits during the college’s annual Colleague Capers Variety Show.

Two years ago a candidate for the college’s board of trustees, using the Latin word for the rabbit family, jokingly claimed the endorsement of the “bipartisan Leporidae Political Action Committee--a small but active group on campus”--and even persuaded a handful of supporters to appear at a candidates’ forum dressed as bunnies.

By last spring, however, the rabbit population had become so large that some of the animals began venturing into residents’ yards near the campus, prompting complaints by neighbors that the rabbits were devouring their flower beds, O’Connell said.

That is when campus officials decided to act.

“We were trying to be good neighbors,” said John Didion, former campus director of support services, adding that the timing of the rabbit roundup--during the summer months when most students were gone--is purely coincidental.

He was quick to add, however, that campus visitors can still find at least 100 of the critters lolling on the lawns, sitting on the sidewalks or biting at the bushes.

“I assure you that there is no shortage of rabbits on the campus,” Didion said.