THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, March 13, 1943. WAR ON THE RABBIT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25173, 13 March 1943, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, March 13, 1943. WAR ON THE RABBIT

It is impossible not to conclude, from the tenor of the discussion at Thursday’s conference of the interests that were called to cohsider the problem of rabbit extermination, that the discouragement or, indeed, the enforced abandonment of rabbiting as an occupation pursued for private gain is a first requirement. Circumstances, chief among them the existence of a profitable export market for skins, have in recent years tended to give a high industrial importance to the practice so frequently referred to by pastoralists and others as “ rabbit farming.” In 1941 the value of skins exported exceeded £1,000,000. In 1942 the trade was still valued at nearly £750,000. These figures, on superficial examination, are undoubtedly impressive. They represent both wages and profits' in substantial measure. But they are falsely interpreted unless they are related to the continuing and increasing existence of a pest which, by the test of long and bitter experience, causes loss to the great farming industries —as a factor making for soil sterility—to an extent that is in no way-comparable with its own value as a, marketable “ farm ” product. The most valuable decisions taken by the conference were undoubtedly those embodied in a resolution calling for (a) the formation in the South Island of contiguous rabbit boards, (b) the enactment of legislation making the creation of such boards mandatory and vesting in them the right to be the only sellers of skins and carcasses, and (c) the amendment of the Rabbit Nuisance Act to give the boards full powers to deal with the pest. It was a significant statement made by the chairman of the Rabbit Skin Committee, Mr R. C. Burgess, that the operation of the levy and subsidy scheme had made it clear “ that the commercialisation of the rabbit was antagonistic to the killer policy.” This view received ample support in the extracts quoted by Mr C. V. Dayus from the report of a Royal Commission which had dealt with the problem of rabbit extermination in Australia as long ago as 1889. The report roundly condemned the employment of professional rabbiters and the payment of State bonuses. No attempt at extermination was made, it complained, and the rabbiters merely “fattened on a pernicious system.” In the commission’s opinion, trapping should be carried out with a view to the extermination of the rabbits, not to the provision of profitable employment* If, as Mr Dayus affirmed, the'facts found by the commission are as operative to-day in New Zealand as they were in Australia when the commission prepared its report, the inescapable conclusion is that eradication of the pest will not be possible until the private profit motive is entirely removed from rabbit control policy. When the aim, consistent throughout the year, is to kill off the vermin and destroy warrens, a steady decline in the ‘degree of infestation may be looked for, accompanied by improve* ment in the productive capacity of land now infested. If the rabbit board system can be so organised as to produce those results—and there seems to be reasonable expectation that it can, with essential variations in powers and practice as between high and low country—the Government should not hesitate to make the experiment. It appears certain, as was stressed by Mr Dayus, that as long as the value of the skin remains the main incentive for the destruction of rabbits there will be no real effort towards their complete extermination.