VALUE OF RABBIT SKINS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4993, 28 June 1926, Page 3

VALUE OF RABBIT SKINS

RUNNING INTO MILLIONS. HIGH PRICES RULING. Last year New Zealand exported 20,000,000 rabbit skins- Thisi number, however, sinks into insignificance when compared with the. export 70,000,000 —of New South Wales, in addition to a big trade in carcases shipped in the skin. Recent 'reports from Sydney state that the skin market is booming. At a May auction the quotation for first winters was! 6s 6d per lb, up to 8s being paid in cases; “Things are shaping for a, record season,” a Sydney 'report tells us, "such is the strength of the export demand. The weekly offerings as yet have not exceeded 120 tons. Supplies, however, are increasing, but are not expected to reach la.st season’s volume, unless it be that high prices stimulate the. extension of the trap-

ping area and encourage more .men to take the field. Already, as. a matter of fact, numbers of mem who have been on strike in the iron trades and coal-mining industries, are trekking inland with trapping equipment. “Ra.bbits are not so plentiful as they were a year ago, and in only about 10 per cent, of the pastures.protection districts is the pest on the increase. More than one, stock inspector, however, complained early in the autumn that rabbits were being shepherded for .the winter skin market by landholders instead of be.ing continually suppressed as the law required.” Seventy million rabbit skins mean over 8,000,0001 b weight, and at 6s 6d a lb the industryy runs into great value —over £2,500’,000, New Zealand’s export last year of 20,000,000 skins was worth £850,000'. Such figures provide some idea of the immense difficulty confronting the Government in the task of reducing the pest. The best that we have been able to do in New Zealand so far is to check its spread, and in spite of v hat is 'frequently said to the contrary, the spread has been checked. Country which was “a,live” a few rears ago is now fairly clean, and probably compensates for the in-, cease of the pest in the more remote districts.