Firstly and most importantly please do not let the information below put you off visiting rabbit island and taking with you food for the estimated 1000 rabbits who live there. If Tourists stop coming, the rabbits will starve. Take as much green veggies as you can, even a bag or two of hay which is a vital part of a rabbit's diet and which they lack at rabbit Island. You can find out more about this and other ways to help further down.
Rabbit Island has been described as a Japanese holiday resort for bunnies but the truth is far less ideal as the rabbits struggle to survive. Domestic rabbits live about 10 years while rabbits on Rabbit Island live at most only a couple of years or less as they succumb to hunger, disease injury and and neglect.
Recently videos about Japan's Rabbit Island (Okunoshima) have been gaining popularity on the internet and the island is a popular tourist destination for anyone visiting Japan. To many people rabbit island is thought of as a paradise for rabbits when in fact the truth is very different.
Most of the videos taken on the island show adorable rabbits who are seemingly very friendly and unafraid of humans whom they descend upon in great numbers. However first impressions can be very deceptive. These rabbits are in fact desperately hungry and thirsty for food and water the tourists have for them, because this is the only nourishment they will get. Without the tourists the rabbits would die of starvation. However even with the help of tourists they are malnourished as the food available, pellets and cabbage, is not healthy for them and their availability is irregular.
Here is the truth which I guess deep down at some level many of us are aware of.
Please watch the following videos which are a bit of an eye opener as the reality of rabbit island is presented to you.
The Dark, Twisted Truth About Rabbit Island Japan.
"Follow me on my journey to rabbit island, also known as Okunoshima in Japan. Here, I discover that not everything is as cute as it seems! While I'm at a loss for how to solve the problem, the following links contain contact information you may be able to direct your feedback & grievances to:
1) https://www.jaws.or.jp/about01/about04/ - Animal Welfare Group in Japan
2) https://www.env.go.jp/en/moemail/ - Email feedback for Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan
3) http://visithiroshima.net/contact.html - Hiroshima Prefecture Contact
4) https://www.japantimes.co.jp/contact-us/ - Japan Times Newspaper If you have any possible solutions or work with animal rights groups in Japan, please let me know.
Read more:
https://youtu.be/mP6LHPIW12M
The truth about rabbit island
Please take the time to watch these videos which may be upsetting. Rabbits are shown with injuries infections and illnesses including tumours and abscesses which are untreated. Many are severely malnourished. Water bowls are empty and in the cases where they are not what little water there is is dirty. Clearly these animals receive no veterinary care or are even provided with their basic needs: Food and clean water. During winter or days when it rains, which is quite often in Japan, and few tourists visit, the bunnies starve. Rabbits require food everyday, all day otherwise they become ill with a condition called Gastro Intestinal stasis , a fatal illness if veterinary care is not given within about twelve hours. You can see obvious signs of malnutrition in the above videos
As you can see all is not what it seems, rabbit island is a not a happy sanctuary for happy bunnies where their every need is met, where there are no predators and their lives can be lived free as wild rabbits should. But therein lies part of the problem, these are not wild rabbits, though they live in the wild they are nonetheless domesticated rabbits who where either let free from the chemical experimentation factory on the island where in 1929 the army brought rabbits to to test the effectiveness of the poison gas or they where bought here by school children and released. The truth of the matter is not clear, however regardless of the circumstances of their arrival on the island their present situation is dire. Though the rabbits live in the wild they are domesticated so they have not the instinct of a wild rabbit to survive, many do not know how to dig borrows and many have no shelter. However even more serious is the fact that there is no natural food on the island. No grass or other nutritious wild plants. The bunnies depend solely on tourists feeding them, mostly the pellets that are sold over on the mainland at the ferry port. There is no food for sale on the Island and no suitable green vegetables or hay, which is the main staple of a rabbits diet, for sale at the the ferry port. Unless visitors have purchased vegetables and hay before arriving at the port, and from what I can see by watching the many videos most people buy and take over only the pellets, the rabbits hardly ever have fresh food and hay.
With some changes rabbit island could be the rabbit paradise many claim it to be. Surely hay, fresh food, clean water could all be provided along with a ranger or some kind of caretaker looking after the bunnies reporting any sick and injured animals with veterinary staff on hand to monitor the health and well being of the island's rabbits. If funding this is a problem and maybe this can be resolved by making a small charge to tourists and also selling suitable food including hay on the island. With a store of food for times when there are less tourists.
Ways to help
If you are planning to make a trip to Rabbit Island please try and bring as much fresh vegetables, such as leafy greens, as you can and hay which should make up 85% of a rabbits diet. Buy before you arrive at the port as you cannot purchase anything there other than cabbage and pellets which is not a healthy diet for rabbits and no food at all is available on the island.
In addition to the links included underneath the first video which I will repeat further down, you might want to try contacting the following:
Try writing to PETA Asia, send links to the videos above and explain the situation. Even if you have no experience of rabbit Island yourself you can still write and refer to these videos and ask for PETAs help in bringing an end to this neglect.
PETA Asia
https://www.petaasia.com/
Contact https://www.petaasia.com/about/contact-us/ you will see several options this I would choose.
https://www.petaasia.com/about/contact-us/report-cruelty-to-animals/
Send PETA Asia a tweet, include links to the films.
https://twitter.com/petaasia?lang=en
This is the Official website of Rabbit island which shows a very different picture to prospective tourists. Maybe contact them with your comments:
http://rabbit-island.info/en/
Contact information from video
Please be polite, abusive communications do nothing to help and may even make matters worse.
The following links contain contact information you may be able to direct your feedback & grievances to:
1) https://www.jaws.or.jp/about01/about04/ - Animal Welfare Group in Japan
2) https://www.env.go.jp/en/moemail/ - Email feedback for Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan
(According to this article https://allthatsinteresting.com/rabbit-island-okunoshima rabbit-island is part of Japan’s National Park Resort system in the middle of the Seto Inland Sea of Japan which comes under the ministry of the environment.)
3)http://visithiroshima.net/contact.html - Hiroshima Prefecture Contact
4) https://www.japantimes.co.jp/contact-us/ - Japan Times Newspaper If you have any possible solutions or work with animal rights groups in Japan, please let me know.
Updates to this web page will be provided whenever they become available.
If you have an other ideas please share them