The Rabbit Nuisance.

Otago Witness, Issue 2055, 13 July 1893, Page 22

The Rabbit Nuisance.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— There is a letter on this subject, dated July 3, in the last issue of the Otago Witness. No time could have been better chosen for bringing on a controversy on the administration of the Rabbit Act with the object of drawing general attention to the faults of the same. The rabbit question is one of those in "which general interest has unfortunately lapsed. The line of thought of those most interested seems to be an apathetic acceptance of the inevitable, while for outsiders the question has no apparent interest. All this requires altering. Every" voter in the country should turn his best and earnest attention to the subject. There is no surer way of enlisting the active sympathy of such as may foolishly suppose they are not vitally interested in this question than to show them that it directly affects their pockets. This is easily done. I beg to say here that the intimate knowledge I have with this subject is based on experience gained on wnat may be called the coastal as opposed to the runs of Central Otago and the Lake district. It is rarely any letter contains so much pure fact in' so small a space as that written by "A. H. T." Take, for instance, his remarks on inspectors and rabbit agents. He is quite right in saying that looked on as a body, these men have displayed an amount of wisdom and consideration in not acting to their full powers which is truly marvellous— the more so when we consider that for every squatter worried and hunted the agent gained popularity locally and officially. The day is coming when the rabbit department, as it exists, must go. It is possible it may be administered in some way which will prove efficacious and find many agents and inspectors in { useful employment. At present these civil ser- j vants 'are very hard-worked, not overpaid, and, broadly speaking, absolutely harmful. For instance, I .maintain fearlessly that every time an agent compels an owner to do summer work, or any work which is against the judgment of such owner or occupier, such work does not only do no good, but does absolute harm. lam here speaking of runs where rabbits are a fixed quantity — i.e., when year in and year out the skins tally to a thousand or two, the difference being attributable to the class of weather experienced in spring and summer. Broadly speaking all run land may be divided into two classes— rabbity and non-rabbity. On the former, do what you will of means invented to date to clear the ground, you will always have rabbits ; on the latter the rabbits are never thick and seldom numerous enough for comment even immediately before poisoning. Nor are such classes of ground widely separated. Such space as is sufficient for the apparent division of two formations is all that is required. Given a warm, I rocky face, with or without scrub, and there you I will be infested, in spite of all preventives. On i tussocky, rolling ground rabbits are seldom thick, | and never so on cold snow grass and coarse tussock j tops.' As an instance of the insistance of work by ' agents being absolutely harmful, here is a case : Given a block of 2000 acres of such ground as may | be considered non-rabbity. On this ground there I is one bad face of 50 acres. In the month of, say, I February the agent comes on this bad patch. Now, as he must do something to justify his existence, he compels the occupier to trap or shoot i that ground for a fortnight, at the expiration of I which time he pays another visit and finds the place ! possibly absolutely clear of rabbits, and on this fact congratulates the occupier and his own intelligence on the^ excellence of the work. What has happened is this : After a week's molestation the rabbits that are not killed leave. They spread out all over the previously clean balance of ground, and by so doing vastly prolong their life, inasmuch as everyone with smallest experience knows you cannot get rabbits to take poison when they are sparsely distributed over a large area. ] Thui the unkilled rabbits are hunted away to breed and for the time infest what was formerly naturally clean ground. Had those rabbits been left there would have been many more in June. This is granted ; but nine-tenths of them would have been destroyed and one-third of the skins recovered— possibly many more, according to the i nature of the ground. My experience, based on close observation, is that rabbits when in a patch as I have described do not naturally spread out, save for feed, always homing in the old place or forming an adjacent colony. Ido not think the absolute injury done by dogging, trapping, and shooting such patches is possible of overestimation. Practical rabbit agents with more intelligence than sense readily admit the truth of tha foregoing. This is the greater harm ; the lesser is where an occupier is compelled to put on men in summer to clear a bad face on naturally bad ground. It is cleared, or pretty well so, at a great cost, and the agent visits the ground within a few days of stoppage of work and notes a great improvement. In a fortnight hence the rabbits are as thick as ever. This is a solid fact, without a scrap of exaggeration. 1 Up to three years ago it was considered satisfactory if a runholder had his rabbits in hand —that is, when there was no great variance in the number of skins from year to year. When the present Ministry took office this was changed. It was obvious in the high lands of Otago rabbits were' not on the decrease, probably the reverse. The cure or practical remedy which at once suggested itself to the departmental head was summer work— a peculiarly pleasant one, for it afforded an opportunity alike of agents and inspectors giving evidence of some kind of work, and also of worrying the overladen squatter. I do not for a moment wish to imply the -sport of manbaiting was an agreeable one to,, those comoelled to do the actual baiting. A little later we had official utterances (or quasiofficial) directed against the rabbit factories— these factories led to the farming of rabbits, and so on. That's a theory. A fact is that when the factories are at work, for miles round any centre of population the rqadlines and • gorge hedges ' show no rabbits popping in and out, The schoolboys have accounted for most— they and regular trappers and shooters. How can they be doing harm? My first suggestion would be that the railways should carry all rabbits to town or factory free of charge. That should be one cardinal point. I say I 'never heard such nonsense as the department allowed ti be circulated. as to the pernicious effect of rabbit factories. The whole argument against it was that ferrets were trapped and destroyed. Very well, if men and boys are willing to do ferrets' work there is no need for ferrets in that locality ; and further, how is it that this kindly consideration for the natural enemy is not in evidence elsewhere, as in the case -of the occupier being forced to work 100 or 200 traps on ground where he has actually turned out ferrets for two or three years at bis own expense? The attitude, then, of our department seems to ba the enforcement of unnecessary and too often harmful summer work, and the discouragement (tacitly, it may be) of rabbit factories. "A. H. T."says the department cists .£40,000 a year. Well, for £40,000 spent in poisoning fairly accessible country employment for the three worst winter months would be found for, say, 1500 men. Cooka and packers would draw from 25s to 30s per week ; poisoners, £2 a week or over ; skin stretchers, 25s per week : and the Government would have over thrr e million skins— worth to them, say, at the least, if properly attended to, over £30,000. Again, if Government did not care for the department to undertake actual work, let them offer 2d for every skin, big and little (except suckers), from immediately after general poisoning (fixture of date to be varied with locality) up to December 1, and from that date up to April 30 Id per skin. The entry for rabbit takers to all leaseholds from the Crown, hedged round with strict limitation as to dogs, &c, and the occupier of the ground only to consent to rabbits being taken when such course was pursued without unnecessary disturbance of stock. This should be accompanied, possibly, with a provision to prevent rabbiting on ground occupied by lambing ewe 3. If some such scheme as this were adopted, I believe tint on all runs adjoining townships rabbiting during the next winter would be confined to poisoning, and the ground would not be worth picking up. I would suggest, then, the formation of " an anti-rabbit act league" in town and country. Every candidate should have a printed slip of paper served on him, and should pledge himself then and there to support the propositions on the paper, They would run roughly as follows :— 1. Are you in favour and will you support a measure for entire remodelling or, if necessary, abolition of Babbit department as it exists? 2. Will you support measure for free carriage of rabbits to any town or factory ?

3. Will you support measure for giving bonus for every skin or some kindred measure which will induce the destruction of rabbits in summer months? It can hardly be supposed that when a block of 30,000 or 40,000 acres is cut up into small gracing runs the rabbits immediately^' recognise the fact and leaye ; yet how else can we account for the fact that ground when held by one man is considered rabbity, and work in season and out insisted on, and yet when the same block of ground is shared by (say) 10 men no mention of work or rabbits is even heard? The only explanation to my mind is that in the latter case the agent is allowed to follow the dictates of reason, and in the former he is not. I must apologise for the terrible length of this letter. Its excuse is to be found in the urgency of some alteration in the present system. " For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do." The lines are hackneyed, but suit the case.— l am, &c, Oamaru, July 10. Sheepparmer.