Down on Their Level

When wildlife photographer Morgan Heim was asked to document efforts to protect the endangered Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit (read Nature Conservancy magazine's Winter 2021 cover story, "A Big Plan to Save a Tiny Rabbit”), she was “stoked,” she says. Heim lives in the Pacific Northwest and had followed the story of the nearly extinct Washington rabbits for years. But the assignment presented a challenge: How do you photograph a rare and tiny animal?

"It's hard to get close to such a skittish animal, nor would you want to do that when you're trying to be respectful of the critter," she says. And the sagebrush the rabbits nibble on doesn't make it any easier. 

“It’s a really chaotic, dense, low-to-the-ground habitat with lots of gnarly vegetation, too,” she says. “And the animal is very small, so it doesn’t even extend above the grass.” 

So Heim turned to camera traps. She coordinated with field staff and scientists involved in the rabbit recovery project out of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to set up camera traps near known rabbit burrows. Triggered by movement, the cameras could capture pictures of the animals without startling them. 

It worked: Heim’s traps captured dozens of pictures of rabbits. “So many of my pictures are these out-of-focus blurred butts of bunnies, just sitting there so close to the camera, or crawling on it, or just hanging out,” she says. "They just didn't seem to mind too much."