Beasts of prey at Helsinki Zoo soon to be fed with the city’s infamous urban rabbits

Helsinki to feed lions and vultures with city bunnies

print this

By Matti Huuskonen
     
      At the turn of the month the lions, wolverines, and  vultures at the Helsinki Zoo - located on the island of Korkeasaari - will be introduced to a domestically-produced addition to their diets, namely Helsinki’s infamous city rabbits.
      The zoo will be provided with rabbits caught from the capital’s parks and green areas by the City of Helsinki's Building Services Unit.
      Nowadays catching and despatching rabbits forms an important part of the maintenance of the parks’ trees and shrubs.
     
The Helsinki Zoo and the City's Building Services have held negotiations over the rabbit issue since the spring.
      The agreement was finalised on Monday, when project planner Antti Rautiainen of Building Services received an email from the Helsinki Zoo veterinarian Eeva Rudbäck.
      In the email Rudbäck reported that she would accept the tariff proposed by Rautiainen: a hairy, ungutted 1-2 kilogram rabbit carcass would from now on change hands for a couple of euros.
     
Until now the zoo on Korkeasaari has purchased its rabbits from Hungarian rabbit farms. The carcasses of rabbits, fat from grazing on the Hungarian puszta plains, have first been transported frozen to Estonia, from where they have been delivered in smaller consignments to Helsinki.
      With the cold-storage transportation and all, the price has climbed to more than ten euros a kilo. Compared with that, the home-grown city rabbits are a cheap and ecological alternative.
      Among the Korkeasaari residents, the Hungarian frozen rabbit has been particularly well received by the bearded vulture, Gypaetus barbatus.
      The big cats, the wolverines, and the bears eat rabbit for the sake of variety: after all, who would want to have just horsemeat or elk for every meal?
     
The animal keepers at the zoo have also tried offering rabbits to the Steller's Sea Eagles, Haliaeetus pelagicus, but with little success. Apparently the heaviest eagle in the world, a beast with a wingspan of more than two metres, is actually afraid of the rather small cuddly cuties, which bear a passing resemblance to fur mittens.
     
To the City of Helsinki's Building Services people, the agreement with the zoo comes as a gift from above: the rabbit populations in the capital's  parks have to be controlled, and the carcasses have to be got rid of somehow.
      The hunters - fewer than a hundred city officials, private entrepreneurs, and hunting enthusiasts - eat only a fraction of the catch.
      Restaurants and for example grocery stores, in turn, shun away from the rabbits: in tests the meat has proved excellent in quality, but with all the veterinary examinations, the refrigerated transportation, and so on, the price would simply be too high.
     
A large portion of the Building Services’ rabbit catch of last year and this year has ended up with the Finnish Museum of Natural History, where a study is being completed on the rabbits’ breeding efficiency.
      For this purpose the rabbits have been cut open and for example the embryos in the wombs have been counted.
      Now, however, the museum’s need for rabbit carcasses has been saturated, and only sporadic individuals brought in by private citizens are still received.
     
If it was not for the Helsinki Zoo, the Building Services would have to pay someone for the disposal of the carcasses.
      Now, on the other hand, a modicum of money is actually being made to cover the hunting expenses.
      And it gets better, too.
      The market in deceased rabbits for animal consumption is secure: according to Rudbäck, the Zoo has the capacity to purchase all the rabbits offered by Building Services and even by other catchers, so long as an agreement is reached on the price.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 15.9.2009


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Private citizens eager to take the law into their own hands over Helsinki´s escalating rabbit problem (12.5.2009)
  Run, rabbit, run (16.1.2007)

See also:
  Architects want polar bears on Korkeasaari (27.1.2009)

Links:
  Korkeasaari Zoo

MATTI HUUSKONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
matti.huuskonen@hs.fi