Hungry rabbits halt planting

Press, 27 June 1983, Page 2

Hungry rabbits halt planting

The voracious appetites of rabbits in the Ohau and Pukaki river valleys have halted a Ministry of Works and Development treeplanting scheme. The landscape supervisor, Mr Jim Mitchell, said that the scheme was aimed at establishing areas of native vegetation, to bring back plants to the area after they had been eaten out by animals over the last 100 years or so. More than 150,000 native plants were raised in the Twizel Plant Materials Centre and included increasingly rare specimens from the Mackenzie Basin. Planting out began in the Pukaki area in May but the plants were eaten within days of being put in the ground, and some cases were reported of plants being chewed while still in their planting-out bags. Mr Mitchell said the whole programme was now in jeopardy and he was instructing landscape staff not to put out some species. “We have the men and the stock, so eventually we will just have to put them out regardless,” he said. “Ideally we should have rabbiters working ahead of us as we move into these areas, or if that is not possible, behind us. However, we have not had much success in interesting any of the appropriate people to do this.”