A real Aqua ship is not easy to find.

In the introduction to his own book, Richard Adams helpfully highlights a reference sheet of 174 maps of the cartographic service. Once on paper, long-remembered names jump off the map: Nuthanger farm, Ashley Warren and Honeycomb are all there. Just a large number of bunnies that have been found in this "put up" the area of great Britain, inspired Adams to compose "Watership Down".

1978 books and the movie that followed was famously the fear generation. In return shaggy bunnies, living in rural idyll, bunnies Adams were calculating killers and foolish killed. It was reddish in teeth and claws, and in the case of the film, shown in the glorious and ruthless Technicolor.

But with the fresh BBC / Netflix habituation apparently in a more flowing tone, what's the reality for the hare population in the UK?

Watership Down is bound to be about doom and destruction, not shaggy bunnies
Stephanie Merritt
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For doctor Diana bell, a rabbit disease professional at the Institute of Eastern Britain, it's scary enough. "Bunnies have every chance to be low all the time," she says. - When did you see the rabbit in the final one? You are no longer-they are elementary no circle as before”

The figures recognize its text. Bell shows up on the report of the English fond of ornithology, which has calculated that the public actually decreased by 60% between 1995 and 2016.

In fact, Aqua boat, bunnies, naturally, hard to find. Warren, the bottomless comb in the lowland is full of burrows, but the hour of research shows only 4 bunnies.

But there are fewer bunnies, there are book prints on the landscape. The large Beech that sheltered Warren was a landmark for many years. "Before people really cared about this tree," says the local resident Brian. "1 woman including your own wife was forced to move 3 hours from Cheshire in a powerful storm of 1987, in order to find out if everything was okay”.

The tree irrevocably destroyed in 2004, and on its space there is only only actually that the planted sapling – on drama of a fate fenced in order to defend it from damages by a hare. The names of 2 rabbit creations by Adams, five and hazel are scrawled on the fence, the most bucolic of graffiti.

District dwellers on the hill have also begun to note the unavailability of bunnies.

"The numbers have definitely gone down in the 18 years I've been here," Brian says, " I think some of them actually relate to the environment around them, but we're still seeing quite a lot of bunnies with myxie that, similarly, come and go”

Myxomatosis, or Mixi, the same terrible disease, like everything else in the book of Adams, and she almost destroyed the population of rabbits in England in the 1950s. The population bounced back, but fresh strains still affect the rabbits from time to time.

For bell, the fresh, silent killer is even more disturbing. "Microbe hemorrhagic disease of rabbit (RHDV) first arrived here from China in the early 90-ies, - speaks it, - and our bunnies were only just beginning to revive, when in 2010, was seen fresh RHDV2 strain, which has since times causes confusion.”

The giant discrepancy lies in the fact that while myxomatosis contains rather trivial signs, RHDV2 leaves quite not enough prints.

” Bunnies who die from RHDV2, as a rule, look is definitely a good idea, in consequence, no one reports them, explains bell, and 1 of the main final stages of the disease-lethargy-so a large number of elementary crawl in their holes and die under the earth.“

Because bunnies underground and leading night, it is not easy to get a good estimate of their number. However, when myxomatosis devastated the public in the 1950s, Buzzards, foxes and ermines all decreased together with their own main source of food, as a result of this it is clear that the decrease in the number of rabbits has an impact straight up the food chain.

 

But the same is true of the food chain, and the distinctive chalk pastures of Watership Down are hoping for bunnies to support it.

”“ There is a plan that is more [in England], where rabbits are actively restored,”explains bell, " due to the fact that quite a large number of rare and original looks rely on them as engineers of ecosystems."

Without the bunnies, hold the pot bottom, the view is so unforgettable the crowded Adams, also has the ability to finish going to sit in.