RABBIT PEST

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 141, 12 December 1923, Page 9

RABBIT PEST

COST TO AUSTRALIA

(FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

SYDNEY, 6th December.

That'the rabbit is a plague and should be treated as such is beyond question. It is estimated that every seven to ten rabbits consume feed which would maintain one sheep, the annual equivalent to-day of ten shillings additional wealth, plus its share of increased trade and labour. A writer in the Press, pointing to the extraordinary depredations of rabbits in New South Wales, states that, to encourage men to make good money in trapping for ekins or carcasses, far from lessening the economic evil, is to make an industry of something that is a dangerous cancer on Australia's greatest industry. That the rabbit is a costly pest is seen from the amazing figures which the writer quotes. Up to June last in •New South Wales 114,944 miles of rabbit fencing had been erected at a cost of £6,763,747. Of this, private enterprise has been responsible for 112 676 miles 1 at the huge outlay of £6,666,000. This works out at' an average of about £59 per mile. Nine-tenths of the fence was erected before the war. To-day the same mileage would .probably cost well over £10,000,000. This, however, is not all. To dig out and destroy in infested country entails a further outlay of 5s to 7s 6d per acre, and, where the land has had to be dug over again, the cost often runs into 10s an acre.' It is said to be. a common thing to see trappers whose capital is represented by a few dozen traps, earning more money in catching rabbits than the landowner himself makes from his sheep on the same land. ■ .