Your newly planted tree is a food source for rabbits. Rabbits can severely damage trees by girdling the trunks or major branches or by completely severing the growing points of terminal leaders on small trees.
To protect your newly planted trees from rabbits make a cylinder out of rabbit wire and attach it to a stake with wire. Place landscape fabric around your tree and then pound the stake into the ground to support the rabbit wire. push the rabbit wire 2 inches into the soil to give it more support and to prevent rabbits from going underneath. Put some wood chip mulch on the landscape cloth around the tree. Leave protection in place for several years.
You have to provide protection for newly planted trees because we are not just feeding rabbits!
