Watership Down tells how a handful of male rabbits escape from a warren (doomed by developer's plans), travel across a hostile countryside, and establish their own warren by stealing females from a neighboring community. After the novel became a best seller, Adams explained in interviews that he intended his novel to be a good cliffhanging tale, to pay tribute to the beautiful English countryside (Watership Down is a real place), and to describe the qualities of leadership.

Adams's last two intentions suggest how he touched upon issues important to readers of the early 1970s. His tribute to the English countryside is less pastoral than ecological. Adams's account of rabbit habitat reflect the ecosystem of a rural landscape where all living things are part of a balance which must be respected. If one part of the ecosystem is carelessly destroyed, the whole environment suffers. Adams's account of...