The worldwide distribution of rabbits reveals their ecological plasticity and their capacity to subsist in many different habitats (Thompson and King 1994). In their native range, rabbits typically prefer areas with a mosaic of shrub and grasses and/or crops: shrub provides protection against predators but low forage abundance, whereas grassland and crops offer little protective vegetation but high food availability (Calvete et al. 2004). In fact, in Iberian Mediterranean-scrubland ecosystems, rabbits reach the highest abundance in the ecotone, which provides intermediate levels of both resources (Lombardi et al. 2003, Calvete et al. 2004).

The fossil record suggests that the European Rabbit likely originated in the Iberian Peninsula (Alves et al. 2008), from where it would have expanded naturally to southern France and northern Africa. Natural subpopulations of this species are currently widespread in Portugal, Spain, southern France, and possibly in northern Africa. The subspecies O. c. algirus only occurs in south-western Iberia (Portugal and southern Spain) and as introductions to the Azores, Madeira, and Canary Islands, whereas O. c. cuniculus is naturally present in northeastern Iberia and in southern France. This latter subspecies (O. c. cuniculus) has been introduced (as feral type) in several other Central European countries and in the United Kingdom. Moreover, the high adaptability of the feral forms of O. c. cuniculus promoted the successful establishment of the European Rabbit in all continents except Antarctica, as well as on at least 800 islands worldwide (Thompson and King 1994).

European Rabbit spread in Europe was reviewed by Thompson and King (1994). The first introductions referred to the introduction in Menorca by eolithic settlers as early as 1400–1300 BCE. Later, the Phoenicians and the Romans spread the species around Mediterranean Europe. In the Middle Ages, rabbit gardens and warrens were built in France, Britain, and Germany, because their meat was highly appreciated. Multiple human introductions resulted in the slow spread of feral rabbits over much of Europe. As a consequence, the species currently occurs in many European countries as an exotic feral species, including Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Ukraine (not mapped), Russian Federation (not mapped), Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It is also present in many European islands such as the Canary Islands, Mallorca and Menorca, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Crete. In the Azores and Madeira archipelagos, the introduced subspecies is O. c. algirus, being the only places where this subspecies was successfully introduced in Europe (Delibes-Mateos et al. 2021).

The decline of Iberian Rabbit populations caused by the new variant of RHD in the 2010s led to the recent change in the conservation status of the European Rabbit by IUCN to Endangered (Villafuerte and Delibes-Mateos 2019). This assessment was mostly based on the declining situation of O. c. algirus since information about rabbit population trends in the native range of O. c. cuniculus is scarce (Vaquerizas et al. 2020).

In areas where the European Rabbit has been introduced, it is often considered as a harmful invasive species due to its characteristic of a successful colonizer. This contradiction explains its IUCN classification as Near Threatened in Europe (Smith and Boyer 2007) and highlights the character of the rabbit as a conservation paradox for the twenty-first century (Lees and Bell 2008). In addition, this may suggest the need for separate IUCN assessments for both European Rabbit subspecies.