The saying goes: “Never turn your back on a rabbit, especially in Central Otago”. But New Zealand has. And now the population has exploded - again. This week, Newsroom Investigates launches an in-depth series about the South Island rabbit rampage.
Rabbits are eating their way through parts of the South Island, turning productive farm land into bare, honeycombed ground where only weeds survive. Lifestyle blocks and subdivisions around Queenstown are infested. The North Otago town of Moeraki has them in plague proportions.
Welcome to another environmental fiasco in Aotearoa.
There have been two occasions in our history when rabbits were almost wiped out: in 1947, when the government set up a Rabbit Destruction Council with the aim to “kill the last rabbit,” and exactly 50 years later when the calicivirus was released illegally by a fed-up farmer.
But in both instances, as soon as it looked like the pest problem was under control, the government and many landowners put their chequebooks away.
Once left to breed unhindered, it is near impossible to bring their numbers back under control. And while the authorities dither, the rabbits breed like, well, rabbits. A single female rabbit can produce 50 offspring in a year and females can breed at five months of age.
The Otago Regional Council concedes there are “hot spots”, but says rabbits are not at plague proportions yet. But there are many who disagree. Landowners told Newsroom if better control measures are not introduced immediately an ecological disaster is just around the corner.
While the release of the 1997 virus worked for a time, wiping out 80 percent of the rabbit population, over the last 24 years it has gradually become less effective, with some rabbits forming an immunity and others - such as the rabbits in Moeraki - stumping scientists as to why the virus doesn’t seem to affect them.
The range of factors playing in the rabbits' favour in Otago and beyond has been widening over the past decade, with a rapid change in land use.
While rabbits have been the bane of dryland farmers' lives since the 1870s, these days so-called ‘lifestyle rabbits’ are laying waste to the gardens of homeowners, reserves and golf courses throughout Otago and Southland.
Thousands of acres of farmland are being subdivided into lifestyle blocks – a third of all houses built around Alexandra in the last 10 years were in rural areas.
With people and pets residing where once there was just wide open space, control options narrow (you can’t poison or trap) whilst creating a more desirable home environment for Mr and Mrs Rabbit and their rapidly expanding family. How do you catch a rabbit in a sub-division?
In towns like Moeraki in North Otago, they’re living under people’s holiday homes, on the marae, under tanks, boats and along reserves and roadsides. And where there are rabbits, other pests follow – feral cats and ferrets who enjoy a side dish of native bird with their rabbit.
Locals say climate change is exacerbating the problem – the three to four month window of opportunity to poison hungry rabbits over a good old-fashioned, freezing-cold Central Otago winter, is now more like six weeks.
Owners of lifestyle blocks throughout Central Otago are finding they have to spend two or three thousand dollars a year on rabbit control – that’s after they’ve forked out $10,000 on a rabbit-proof boundary fence. “The Real Estate agents didn’t tell us about the rabbits” is an often heard complaint from recently-arrived Aucklanders.
The Ministry for Primary Industries describes rabbits as one of the country’s most serious environmental pests. “It’s previously been estimated that rabbits cost New Zealand over $50 million in lost production, plus a further $25 million in direct pest control a year.”
This week, Newsroom sets out the scale of the ecological, agricultural and economic problem multiplying rapidly across a big chunk of the country.
Tomorrow in Part 1: The rabbit problem: "It's as bad as it's ever been."
* Made with the support of NZ on Air *
