SOMMER: Farm fields don't provide any shelter for the rabbits, so they have nowhere to go. HOPSON: Unfortunately, nowadays most of that natural high grounds right up slope from the floodplains is taken up with farmland. In the past, when the river flooded, the rabbits would just move to higher ground. These rabbits didn't always need saving, of course. Some were plucked from tree branches after the dry ground disappeared. So far, Hopson and his team have rescued more than 360 endangered rabbits.
It'll be vaccinated as well against a new threat - rabbit hemorrhagic disease, a fatal virus that recently arrived here. SOMMER: This rabbit is in a wire cage, a small trap that Hopson has set so it can be moved somewhere safer. In fact, there was a period of time where they are actually thought to be extinct. HOPSON: In the late 1990s, they were thought to be near extinct. SOMMER: It's a brown rabbit, only a foot long, and it's highly endangered. HOPSON: So we do have a riparian brush rabbit. SOMMER: That will give the wildlife nowhere to go, including what Hobson spots right ahead. But some of this is going to be flooded when the water comes up another two or three more feet. HOPSON: So we have this strip of high ground that isn't flooded. SOMMER: We head out in an aluminum boat, looking for islands of dry land in all this water. SOMMER: It's good for a lot of wildlife but not all of them. HOPSON: But we found that they're very quick to make a new home. HOPSON: Yeah, the beavers are - they're kind of homeless because their lodges and burrows are inundated. The river here has gone over its banks, swamping stands of cottonwood trees. SOMMER: Eric Hopson is refuge manager at the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge. The ducks and the waterfowl are really loving it right now. Now it's overflowing.ĮRIC HOPSON: It's really good if you're a fish. This is a river that goes completely dry in some years because it's so heavily used in California. LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE: The San Joaquin River is unrecognizable right now.
NPR's Lauren Sommer takes us to the Central Valley, where rescues are underway for an endangered rabbit. But for some animals, it's been life-threatening. The abundant water in California has been a boost for many animals and plants, including a superbloom of wildflowers.
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