STOATS AND WEASELS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIV, Issue 289, 17 November 1924, Page 7

STOATS AND WEASELS.

AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT’S ATTITUDE. COPING WITH THE RABBIT PEST. Stoats and weasels which have been alleged to attack lambs have staunch champions in the Agricultural Department, whose officers claim that they do valuable service in keeping down the rabbit pest in districts where rabbits have been reduced to normal numbers. There has also been some difference of opinion, however as to whether stoats and weasels really do prey upon rabbits- In this connection a writer to the Christchurch “Press” ' stated recently that in January last, when on an expedition in the back country by Canterbury, he came upon a fair-sized rabbit being dragged over a swampy piece of ground by a weasel. “The rabbit,” stated the writer, “was cured and formed our dinner instead of the weasel’s. It was more or less open country with but few rabbits to be seen. A few weeks iater, again in daytime, I came upon the same scene in the Upper Kakatahi district, Hokitika, in a place where rabbits are numerous. Doubtless this tackling of rabbits by weasels is a most common occurrence.”

Up to the present, the Agricultural Department has refused to lift the protection from stoats and weasels, contending that any harm they may do in killing a few birds is more than offset, by the valuable work they do in assisting to keep down the rabbits.