DAMAGE BY RABBITS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20587, 28 November 1936, Page 15 (Supplement)

DAMAGE BY RABBITS

AGENTS IN SOIL EROSION PRODUCTIVE VALUE HALVED Nearly 1,000,000,000 rabbits are slaughtered in Australia every year, in an effort to keep the pest within bounds, writes an Australian correspondent of the London Times. Ten rabbits are said to consume as much grass and herbage as one sheep, without accounting for the pasture they spoil and otherwise destroy. If the rabbit could be exterminated, Australia could maintain twice as many sheep and other live stock. The wool clip

is worth over £40,000,000 a year, and £10,000,000 worth of sheepskins are exported annually. If Australia had never been afflicted with the rabbit, her chief primary products would probably be double their present value and the national income would be increased by £50,000,000 a year. Against this the rabbit returns Australia only £2,000,000 a year. The control of the rabbit pest would probably give the greatest help to the checking of sand-drift. Rabbits are denuding enormous areas of vegetation, and there is no holding ground for the soil when winds sweep over it. Their capacity for destruction is amazing. Grasses, bush, growing crops, bark of trees as high up as they can reach, anything they can nibble

is attacked with devastating vigour. Travellers in Central Australia and the northern country of this State report that the numbers of rabbits now are fewer than for many years. Prolonged and constant droughts in Central Australia and in the far north have kept them in check; but the problem must return with the good seasons, and now would be the time to begin the inevitable campaign. More Deserts Forming Dr Madigan, lecturer in geology at the Adelaide University in Central Australia, and is an accepted authority on its future, supports the opinion that there is a grave possibility of more deserts forming there and linking up with others. An increasing menace is the Simpson Desert, which spreads over 43,500 square miles of country between the Finke River and the Queensland border. This formidable area has just been crossed for the first time by a white man. Apart from being a prolific breeding ground for rabbits, it is an enormous contributor to sanddrift, and its investigation will be a most important phase in the scheme for 1 the regeneration of the farspreading soil erosion areas. The Lake Eyre region is the jumping-off place for the rabbits in their unconquerable descent upon the northern pastoral district of South Australia.

A recent instance of the encroaching sea of sand-drift is the Marree of Birdsville track, which runs for 370 miles along the main cattle route from Queensland to South Australia. A traveller who went over it in the latter part of July describes it as the loneliest road in Australia, . for there are fewer than 20 people in the whole distance. At present the track in some parts is verdant as a fertile countryside For some thousands of square miles there is a green mantle of vegetation showing what the country can do in favourable years, after 18 months of one of the worst droughts on record. Wild flowers and daffodils are abundant. It must be 12 years since there has been anything like these gay touches in a country where greys and browns seem to rule alone. The birds have come back, too, flashing among the trees in all the jewelled splendour of tropic plumage. Flocks of wild turkeys, fearless of men, in the innocence of isolation, remain within a few yards of passing motor cars.

That is the pretty side of the picture Everywhere there is evidence of the advance of sand from the denuded outer areas. Drifting soil has filled the beds of the rivers, and at the present rate of progress it must be only a few years before the track is closed. The sand demon is already writing the doom of Farina, a town on the line to Alice Spring, and situated 400 miles north of Adelaide. The whole of this once busy and prosperous little district, where at one time as many as 20 camel trains could be seen loading or unloading, threatens to become an uninhabitable waste. Only a few buildings are there now to remind residents and travellers of happier days, and they will soon be engulfed by the oncoming sea of sand. In its “big” days, of which people are already reminiscent, Farina boasted two hotels, well-provisioned stores, rows of cottages, and even dance halls. Most of them have been buried in the wreckage. The fences of some of the remaining houses in the main street have been covered, and sand is now b|owing in through every crevice; the unfortunate occupants dare not open their windows if only a light breeze is blowing. On one windy night will return all the sand carted away in days of laborious work. There is sft of sand in front of the garage, and it is impossible for people to go to church. The railway itself is threatened.