RABBIT DESTRUCTION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 168, 15 October 1941, Page 2

RABBIT DESTRUCTION

SUBSIDY SCHEME HAS ONCE AGAIN BEEN INTRODUCED

The scheme instituted last year by the Government for subsidising the wages of unemployed men who were put on to summer rabbit destruction has been reintroduced this year as from September 15. The scheme Avas regarded by farmers last year as highly satisfactory, and at the conference of South Island Rabbit Boards, held in Ghristchurch last month, the Government Avas urged to continue it this year. The scheme allows Avork to be continued Avhen the export market does not attract commercial rabbiters.

Under the scheme this year, the wages of registered unemployed who are engaged for rabbit destruction will be subsidised by £3 10s a week, which means that the employing authority, a rabbit board, county council, committee of farmers, or in some cases individual farmers, will be re quired to find only the difference between the subsidy and the award rate of £4 15s lid per week. The scheme was last year confined to registered unemployed, and though there was in some districts some relaxation of this qualification, one of the criticisms farmers had to make of the scheme was that it precluded the employment of experienced men who were not actually unemployed, but who might have been more usefully employed in rabbiting. To meet this situation, men unemployed but not eligible for relief may this year be at a subsidy of £3 a week, provided they are approved by the Department of Agriculture, an alteration which is in line with recommendations made to the Minister by the rabbit board's conference. A further recommendation of the conference was that the scheme should be brought into operation earlier, and this year the scheme will start approximately a month earlier than it did last year. The advantage of this is that it gives rabbit destroying authorities a chance of exterminating the earlier litters which if left would have reached breeding age before the end of the summer.

The greatest difficulty in working the scheme last year Avas found to be the difficulty of obtaining suitable labour. Since the Avar began, of course, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain labour in the country for any sort of AA'.ork, and doubtless the position will be little better this year.

All those board and other > auth. orities avlio used the subsidy scheme last year Avere most enthusiastic about it, and speakers at the conference reported that it had been the aeans of greatly increased* destruction of rabbits. No figures are available to show definitely what effect the scheme had, but it may be significant that sales of skins in the first three months of this year, when most of the spring and summer kill would be marketed, totalled 1,138,000, against 294,000 in the first three months of last year. Those figures, of course, do not indicate the total number of rabbits killed, because rabbiters under the scheme in most areas pay special attention to nests in Avhich the rabbits are too young to skinning, and a great deal of fumigating is done.-