Another Proposed Cure for the Rabbit Pest.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XIX, Issue 1877, 30 August 1886, Page 2

Another Proposed Cure for the Rabbit Pest.

The following extract is from the Dum* fries Courier ‘"One animal which bat long been banished from the south of Scot,ami bids fair to answer its recall because of its rabbit loving propensities ; wo refer to the| badger or brock. Mr. Charles St John in his * Wild sports of the Highlands’ speaks of it as that ‘ancient, peaceable, an 4 respectable animal.’ He says the phraee ‘ stinking as a badger,’ is quite inapplicable to it. The badger's retreat is a pattern of cleanliness. Generally speaking it is a useful and harmless animal. Its diet consists chiefly of vegetables (including the bulbous roots of the wild hyacinth, snails, coarse grasses, wasps' nests, which it digs up, and such small animals as it can catch in its nocturnal walks. It is also very fond of young rabbits. The latter characterstic induced Colonel Blackett, a proprietor in the Kirklanow, to introduce badgers on that property. A couple of years ago a mala and two females were turned loose, and they bred in the locality, to the dismay and destruction of the rabbits. A full grown rabbit can elude the badger, but it is delighted with ths small suckling conies. It is well known that the female rabbit forms her nursery at some distance from the common burrow. She digs a bole in the ground often in the open field, jnakes it comfortable, there hides her young, and covers up the entrance during the day. At night she attends to the little one*. The badger is then on the ramble, and having found out the nursery, he speedily digs bis way down, which his powerful claws enable him to do with ease, and makes a meal of all within. Should the mother rabbit be at home she probably shares the fata of her offspring. In this way the rabbits are literally " nipped in the bud." Though very fond of a nest of partridge eggs, and the old bird too if she be caught, the badger is not nearly so destructive of game as the fox, and he is far too shy an animal to venture near a henroost. The experience made by Colonel Blackett, it seems to us, is worthy of consideration. Here is a method of thinning the rabbits and without cost. The badger will not be in the way, and should his progeny become too numerons they could easily be decimated, and their pelts would pay for the labour. From colonial newspapers wc observe that the rabbit is becoming a nuisance in Ausiralia. It might be worth while for those who wl]o suffering fiom its ravages to introduce a. few badgers. If the climate answered the latter, so would an abundance of rabbits.'

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