The Regional Director for Forest Resources, Anabela Isidoro, announced that about 70% of rabbit populations on Terceira and 40% on São Miguel and Graciosa have already acquired immunity against the new variant of the Viral Haemorrhagic Disease virus.
 
"These data are good news," said Anabela Isidoro, who participated in the public presentation of a study conducted on the islands of São Miguel, Terceira and Graciosa, designated as "Monitoring of DHV2 in wild rabbit populations in the Azores," which took place on the island of Flores last Tuesday.
 
Identified in France in 2010, the new variant of Viral Haemorrhagic Disease virus, which triggered an outbreak in Mainland Portugal in 2012/13 with a high mortality rate, reached the Azores in November 2014, with Graciosa being the first island to be affected.
 
Anabela Isidoro said the study now presented was based on rabbits collected in December 2016 with the collaboration of hunters, allowing a comparison with data referring to 2015.
 
"The services have been conducting a monthly monitoring of the wild rabbit populations on all islands," assured Anabela Isidoro.
 
Already in May, the Regional Secretary for Agriculture and Forests, João Ponte, said the Azores maintain a regular monitoring of haemorrhagic fever in rabbits, stressing that the resolution of the situation is slow and requires constant monitoring.
 
Regarding the island of Flores, this new variant was the first case of virus or parasite that reached, for the first time, the wild rabbit population of that island and, for that reason, it affected drastically the species in the beginning of 2015. The regular monitoring that is being conducted on all islands allowed the detection of six dead rabbits on the island of Flores in March and April, which were collected and sent for analysis. The combined data from the results of these tests and the monthly censuses allowed us to verify that there was a new of DHV2 outbreak on the wild rabbit population on Flores Island that has since ended, even though the virus is always present on the islands.
 
The Regional Director explained that, according to the researchers, it is a new variant of the disease, which is very aggressive and without effective vaccination in wild rabbits. Currently, attempts to repopulate are inadvisable, as they would promote greater difficulty in the ability of the local rabbit population to create natural defences against the virus.
 
"What we can do is waiting, let the existing population to rest and recuperate on its own," Anabela Isidoro said, adding that the situation is being monitored by Forest Services in collaboration with CIBIO-UP experts.

On Thursday, a new public presentation of the study will take place in Ponta Delgada. It will be attended by 2 researchers from the Centre for Research on Biodiversity and Genetic Resources of the University of Porto, Professors Pedro Esteves and David Gonçalves, as well as the technician from the Regional Directorate for Forest Resources, engineer Manuel Leitão.