TEAR GAS PROVED MOST EFFECTIVE RABBIT KILLER
For many years pastoralists in Australia and New Zealand have been waging a constant battle against the rabbit population. This war has cost them many hundreds of thousands of pounds and much labour.
Considerable skill and ingenuity has been brought to bear in devising ways and means of destroying the pest, but although they have been trapped, poisoned and -shot at they continue to be a very great menace. Different kinds of fumigants have been tried and one of the largest manufacturers in Australia has now turned to Chloropicrin, more familiarly known to exservicemen as ‘tear gas.’ This fuimgant, sold in liquid form immediately volatilises into gas on contact with the air and in Australia is proving the most effective and drastic killing agent yet tried. One prominent New South Wales grazier reports that Chloropicrin, or Larvacide as it is sometimes called, is superior in final kill, ease of application and economy of cost. He treated 1,000 acres of' fairly heavily infested country, using 32 lbs of fumigant at an overall cost of £45 for labour and material. The Chloropicrin was injected into the burrows with a specially designed gun at the rate of 5 ccs. per burrow. Trappers who had been catching forty to fifty rabbits each night were able to trap only four or five after the burrows had been gassed.
So far,, as it is known, the killer rabbit boards in New Zealand have not yet carried out any large scale trials with Chloropicrin but it would appear that it has a definite future in pest destruction in this country. For the past few years, Chloropicrin has been used by tomato growers for sterilising the soil in their glasshouses and by nurserymen for The soil' of their seed boxes as it kills most weeds and destroys harmful soil fungi which cause wilts and roots and damping off. Other uses are grain fumigation and the destruction of rats in sheds and warehouses and mice in haystacks.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BPB19490629.2.42
Bibliographic details
Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 5, 29 June 1949, Page 7
Word Count
335TEAR GAS PROVED MOST EFFECTIVE RABBIT KILLER Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 5, 29 June 1949, Page 7
Using This Item
Beacon Printing and Publishing Company is the copyright owner for the Bay of Plenty Beacon. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 New Zealand licence . This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Beacon Printing and Publishing Company. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.