Rare Bunny Virus Is Spreading, National Parks Service Rangers Warn

National Park Service rangers issued a warning regarding the spread of a rare virus that is sickening and killing wild cottontail rabbits in a national park spanning two states.

Visitors of Dinosaur National Monument, located in Colorado and Utah, are urged to take caution and not approach any wildlife, specifically wild rabbits due to the recent number of rabbit hemorrhagic diseases, or RHDB2 cases confirmed at the park recently, NBC News reports.

The disease is considered to be a lethal virus and highly contagious.

Dinosaur National Monument spokesperson Dan Johnson said the virus typically has a brutal effect on rabbits, which is almost always deadly.

"They often have a bloody froth at the mouth," Johnson said via NBC News.

Johnson said Dinosaur National Monument park rangers initially noticed a spike in rabbit deaths around early June and made news of the confirmed cases public once the test results were returned earlier this week.

RHDV2 was initially detected in France in 2010 and spread across Europe and into Australia before the first cases among the rabbit populations in the United States were confirmed in April 2020.

The initial U.S. cases were reported in the southwestern region of the country in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, as well as northern Mexico, a report from the National Wildlife Health Center of the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed.