The New England cottontail rabbit depends heavily on southeastern Connecticut for its survival and expansion. The shy mammal once was common throughout most of New England and eastern New York state, but now its habitat is 85 percent smaller than it was in 1960.

Fortunately, the rabbit remains fairly entrenched in the thickets and undergrowth stretching from the lower Connecticut River Valley south to Long Island Sound and east to the Rhode Island border, a swath that encompasses public land such as Pachaug State Forest, Bluff Point and Haley Farm, as well as privately owned tracts.

As with many mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, insects and plant species, the New England cottontail needs contiguous habitat to survive and thrive. Isolated thickets do not equate to species health. The rabbit needs 10-acre to 25-acre thickets connected to other thickets of comparable size.

Contiguous habitat crosses municipal and state boundaries. Only regional cooperation, collaboration, awareness and action will yield positive results for the cottontail. In short: one town alone cannot save this mammal, nor the long list of other species whose Connecticut populations are dwindling, or under assault because of development, climate change, agricultural decline and human intrusion.

The New England cottontail is among 47 species dependent on young forest and shrubland and identified as those of “greatest conservation need” in Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s newly revised 10-year Wildlife Action Plan. Young forest and shrubland is one of numerous types of habitat discussed in the plan, a draft of which will be sent to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in April.

If one point jumps out from the report’s eight chapters and hundreds of detailed pages, it is that effective wildlife and plant conservation will be successful only with a regional approach.

Unfortunately, land-use decisions are made within the boundaries of Connecticut’s 169 fiefdoms, otherwise known as municipalities. This hyper-local conservation approach is not good news for threatened and dwindling species.

Jenny Dickson, DEEP supervising wildlife biologist, says the action plan recognizes local land-use commissions such as municipal Inland Wetlands agencies will play a key role in proactive conservation efforts to protect species ranging from the cottontail and the spadefoot toad to the spotted salamander and the tautog. But without a broader ranging regional effort that puts local, state and federal governmental entities on the same page with regional councils of government and non-profit conservation and ecological groups, positive results are likely to be limited.

The long lists of species noted in the action plan as needing attention is evidence of a crucial need for local land-use commissions to work with one another on policies, regulations and plans that recognize threatened species are blind to political boundaries. Regional councils of government should take the lead in this effort, bringing local officials together with non-profit conservation groups to plan effective means to save the state’s troubled native wildlife before it’s too late.