Please join us for guest speaker, Dr. Amanda Cheeseman’s talk about the New England cottontail rabbit, “Living on Borrowed Time: The Life History and Decline of our Only Native Cottontail.” Found only within the densest thickets of New England and eastern New York, the New England cottontail had lost much of its habitat by the beginning of this century. Like many other early successional species, habitat loss, invasive plants, and increasing human development have caused substantial population declines and posed serious challenges toward the recovery of this little-known rabbit. Come hear how biologists are racing to understand the New England cottontail’s biology and relationships with its environment in order to reverse declines and recover the Northeast’s only native cottontail species.

Dr. Cheeseman is a Theodore Roosevelt Postdoctoral Scholar and Coordinator of the New York Mammal Survey at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, where she also earned a Ph.D. in Conservation Biology in 2017 for her research on the New England cottontail.