TRAPPING OF RABBITS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 255, 22 July 1921, Page 7

TRAPPING OF RABBITS

CONDEMNED AS USELESS.

The trapping of rabbits was condemned as useless by Sir Walter Buchanan nt the conference of the Council of Agriculture yesterday. Sir AValter Buchanan moved: — "That the Government be urged to pass legislation prohibiting under heavy penalties the use of rabbit traps or any other methods of killing rabbits likely to 'injure or destroy what are commonly called tho natural enemies of tho rabbit —viz., sto'ats, weasels, ferrets, and cats.” Tho mover said that New Zealand had had moi-e than fifty years’ experience of tho rabbit, and it was not for him to estimate tho millions of pounds of loss that tho rabbit had caused. Taking an averayo for the years 1919 and 1920, this country had exported , 14,000,000 skins each year. In ths district in which he had lived for the past half-century rabbits had now been reduced till they weie hardlv to bo found, because their natural enemies, had been given a chance -.o keep them down. Another delegate agreed with the mover that trapping was not effective: ho preferred poisoning. As to the natural enemies, however, ho did not agree. He considered that tho rabbit flourished quite well in spite of its enemies. Dr. C. J. Reakcs, Director of Agriculture, thought there could lie no doubt about tho value o£ natural enemies in keeping down the pest. Reasonable destructive measures, when combined with the use of netting, certainly did much to thin the rabbits out; and if tho rabbits wero being killed off, what was in the Rabbit Act did not much matter to the landowner. The motion was carried.