Native or not?

The rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is usually classed as a non-native introduction to the UK, but it seems that in the past there may have been native rabbits here.

Archaeologists have found their bones in deposits associated with the last warm interglacial period more than 100,000 years ago. As there is no evidence of native rabbits in the Neolithic or in the Bronze and Iron Ages, it is now believed that the species did not survive the last glaciation, which ended 25,000 years ago.

We think the Romans brought rabbits here as pets, and we know the Normans brought them as livestock and confined them in coneygarths or warrens. The first real evidence we have of their escape into the wild and subsequent naturalisation comes from 1340 AD, when the good people of West Wittering complained that rabbits owned by the Bishop of Chichester had escaped and destroyed their wheat.

Perhaps we should reclassify the rabbits in the warren at the far end of Sleepers Field as re-introduced natives.