The Waipa Post. Published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 1924. A PEST THAT PAYS.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1542, 30 August 1924, Page 4

The Waipa Post. Published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 1924. A PEST THAT PAYS.

IN this year's report of the Department of Agriculture, there is curious proof of the way in which vested interests may spring up to handicap reform. The rabbit is a nuisance, but to some persons it is a profitable nuisance. In Australia the rabbit trapper has established quite a strong vested interest, and we seem to he approaching the same condition in ■New Zealand. That is to say, tlhere are mien to whose interests it is that the rabbit pest should persist. "The opinion is strong within the Department —and it finds a good deal of support outside —that the real danger is the rabbit farmer," says the. Christchurch Press, comtaienting on the report. It is useless to deny that there are many people on or associated with pastoral country who find rabbits their biggest source of income during the winter months, and they are all, unfortunately, in the South Island." The Director of the Livestock Division praises the North Island Rabbit Boards for their work, but "very much regrets" that the reports of the work of most of the Boards in Otago and Southland are not so satisfactory. The high price of rabbit skins interferes with the operations against the pest. "The total value of the export trade in rabbits and their skins is scarcely half a million sterling, in spite of the high price of skins," he says, "but-if the food which went to feed the fourteen million * rabbits whiclh supplied the skins to that value (without calculating the additional numbers killed and not collected, and those left to 'carry on') had been feeding sheep, it does not require a financier to estimate the yearly loss which the Dominion is suffering through the rabbit pest." It might be suggested that possibly there are areas in Central Otago which would be best utilised by being given over to rabbits, but that migiht provoke a public mieeting of indignation in Dunedin. The North Island would do well to note what is happening in the South. It does not want the industry that lives on the pest.