RABBIT BOARDS AND RABBITS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21414, 5 March 1935, Page 8

RABBIT BOARDS AND RABBITS

TO THE BDITOK OP TUB TUESS. Sir,—Ratepayers in the Hurunui Rabbit Board's district are asking what has happened to the inspectors. Of late years it has been the custom for them to hunt the landowners up to attend to rabbits, while the harvest is not much more than started. So far this year (an election year)* we see nothing of an inspector whatever. Let the ratepayers not forget that there will be an election soon, and that there is a good case for abolition of this board instead of electing any further one. Let the ratepayers consider the few facts given below.

The Hurunui Rabbit Board was formed in the first instance to keep the rabbits to the areas in which they had become a "pest," by erecting and maintaining fences principally. It did this successfully until the present board decided to give over the fences to'private ownership. Now it is impossible to know which was the "infested" and which the "protected" area. The sole function of the board at the present time seems to be merely to collect rates and spend them on "inspection" and "expenses." This is nothing but overlapping in both ways with the Department of Agriculture's inspector. If the board had persisted with the employing of its own rabbiters, as it did about the year 1924, instead of dropping it because of the extra clerical work entailed, it would have the whole of its district clear of rabbits long before this. Gisborne was worse than this district ever was. and the rabbits were dealt with there by a "destruction board," which made a clean sweep of them in a very few years. Much is made of the lower rate struck by the board since there are no fences to maintain. The "rate" in the £ is lowered certainly, but to offset this the stock returns are made up at a different period of the year, so that lambs all come in the count. In any case, the rate is more out of proportion to services rendered than at any time. Why not let the ratepayers have a postal ballot or. the question, "Abolition or not?" If the subsidies now paid by the Government to rabbit boards were used as a fund for the equalisation of the price of skins, it would do far more than it now does to keep the pest in check. What is needed is a scheme whereby the price of summer skins could be subsidised enough to make it possible for rabbiters to make a living wage at their jobs all the year round. Take a levy off all winter skins over a certain price per hundred to balance the ledger, or as nearly as possible. Everyone knows that rabbits become a pest only when skins are below a "wages" price. There are boards and schemes no end in existence now. Why not have another one, and call it an equalisation scheme, if you like? The deer skins are dealt with somewhat on these lines, and successfully apparently. Ratepayers should

wake up and not let this election slip quietly past, as most of them do, almost unnoticed.—Yours, etc., BUDGET. February 27, 1535. [The chairman of the Hurunui Rabbit Board, to whom the above letter was referred, declined to answer an anonvmous corresoondent.l