Control of Rabbits

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21817, 21 November 1940, Page 4

Control of Rabbits

TO many farmers and runholders in South Canterbury, the statement of the Minister of Labour, the Hon. P. C. Webb, that a plan had been prepared for the control of the rabbit pest, will be heartening news. It is also good to learn that already men are working on the new scheme on 27,000 acres in South Canterbury. The chief fault that can be found with the proposal is the contradiction that the Minister himself makes. He states that the plan provides for “a concerted and continuous attack on rabbits with a view to complete elimination.” Yet later on the Minister says “important as is the destruction of rabbits, it must be subordinated in wartime to immediate production, therefore the men now engaged upon this task will be made available as required for shearing or other necessary farm work.” Surely the Minister must realise that one of the great aids to production—and to immediate production—would be a control of the rabbit menace. Furthermore he cannot hope for a “continuous attack on rabbits” if the “men now engaged on this task will be made available for shearing or other necessary farm work.” It would be wise for the Minister to know that the history of rabbit control in this country iij strewn with the wreckage of enthusiastic endeavours that have been launched with high hopes, but due to a lack of continuous effort, tlrese endeavours have gradually lost momentum after the first enthusiasm has waned. Even in the infant days of the colony it was quickly realised what a danger the rabbit could be to a pastoral country, and as far back as 1871 the first “Rabbit Nuisance Act” was passed. In the early days of South Canterbury settlement, Charles Tripp of Orari Gorge Station, observing the depredations of the rabbit in the Southern districts, urged that the invasion of these pests, which were steadily making their way northwards, should be stopped at the Waitaki River. Due largely to his constant agitation, the Government, in the eighties, were induced to erect an eighty-mile wire fence stretching from Kurow to Lake Pukaki and from there up the Tasman Valley to the Alpine regions. But it was not long before slips, swollen creeks and dislodged rocks had made sufficiently large entrance places in the fence for the rabbits. In fitful endeavours to control the pest, ferrets, weasels and stoats have been imported; inspectors appointed; boards created; while poison gas and even disease have been summoned to aid this country in its seventy-year warfare with the rabbits. The long list of successive spurts and successive failures should be sufficient warning to the Minister that the rabbit menace can be brought under control by steady persistent effort rather than by well-meaning spasmodic bursts of enthusiasm.