ERADICATION OF RABBITS

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28257, 20 April 1957, Page 10

ERADICATION OF RABBITS

“Myxomatosis Of Limited Value”

Further attempts to introduce myxomatosis into New Zealand are not likely to serve any useful purpose, according to an Australian expert who recently visited New Zealand. The expert is Mr F. N. Ratcliffe, officer in charge of the wildlife survey section, who has reported his findings in a letter to the Rabbit Destruction Council.

Mr Ratcliffe said that even if conditions could be found or made favourable for the transmission and spread of myxomatosis, he did not see how the disease could be expected to make any significant contribution or addition to what had already been done by the New Zealand killer rabbit boards. "Myxomatosis has certain and very great potentialities, and also certain definite limitations,” said Mr Ratcliffe. "All that the disease can be expected to do under favourable conditions is to reduce rabbits from a high density to a low one; the recurrent epidemics always leave survivors which breed up, slowly or rapidly, to produce an increasing population till such time as another outbreak of the disease occurs, or the animals are dealt with by conventional methods.

‘Rabbit eradication can be divided into three stages, the main blitz, mopping up, and maintenance. All that myxomatosis does really is to replace human effort in the first stage—the main blitz—and it still leaves the problems of mopping up and maintenance. In New Zealand, the main blitz against the rabbit has already been carried out in almost all important areas.

"In spite of what I have said, I think it would be unwise for the New Zealand authorities to forget myxomatosis altogether,” said Mr Ratcliffe. “There may be times and places where it could help; but I think we can take it that the attempts to establish the disease in New Zealand, (which were much more numerous and thorough than I had realised before I visited the country) have established beyond reasonable doubt that your naturally-occur-ring insect vectors are inadequate for its effective transmission and spread.” Mr Ratcliffe said that if the European rabbit flea, the vector primarily responsible for the spread of myxomatosis in Britain, could be introduced and established in New Zealand in places where rabbits remained plentiful, attempts to introduce the virus might then be made.