Image courtesy of elcivics.com

For many years, parks in the Kungsholmen neighborhood of Stockholm, Sweden have been plagued by an adorable pest: rabbits.  These rabbits are not native to Sweden, but are likely the descendants of pet rabbits that people have released into the “wild” of city parks.

Thousands of these rabbits have been destroying said parks, and the city of Stockholm has hired sharpshooters to help take care of the problem.  These shooters culled over six thousand rabbits last year, and three thousand this year so far, according to the BBC–but what to do with them?

Instead of disposing of these rabbits as animal waste, they are being used as biofuel to heat Swedish homes.  The sharpshooters collect and freeze these rabbits, which are then picked up by contractors, once there are enough.  These contractors bring the rabbits to a company called Biomal, which processes the the rabbits before they are taken to a power plant, where they are burned as fuel.

Not everyone is happy about this new fuel source, and the practice has been opposed by many animal rights groups, including Sweden’s Society for the Protection of Wild Rabbits.

“Those who support the culling of rabbits surely think it’s good to use the bodies for a good cause. But it feels like they’re trying to turn the animals into an industry rather than look at the main problem,” Anna Johannesson of the society told Vårt Kungsholmen newspaper.

The society suggests that, instead of killing the rabbits, a chemical should be sprayed on park plants to make them unappetizing to rabbits.  City officials say that this would merely move the problem, rather than solve it.

Stay toasty, people of Sweden.