PEST AND PROFIT

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3002, 23 February 1926, Page 4

PEST AND PROFIT

RABBITS IN AUSTRALIA,

A FRUITLESS DISCUSSION, SEEKING THE CULPRIT.

Sydney, Feb. 4

A controversy lias been proceeding in the open columns of the Sydney Press in regard to the introduction of the rabbit into Australia. The question as to what particular individual or individuals first brought into Australia the curse from which the man on the land is now suffering is interesting, but a tour of the country immediately suggests that ink could be better spilt and time far more effectively occupied in evolving some big national scheme for trying to get rid of this pest, now that it is with us. This was brought home to the writer recently in' motoring from Melbourne Melbourne to Sydney. About (io miles out from Albury, on the New South Whales side, the coun- | try was alive with rabbits, notwithstanding rabbit-proof fencing. The statement that the country out a bit further back was almost black with them was easily believed. Not a few of them showed their contempt for the car and its occu--pants by bolting across the road, in order to escape the wheels of the motor, and then boldly and impudently watching the car pass. Others, with less audacity, slipped quickly Into the burrows which were everywhere, and which were eloquent witness to the vast army of rabbits which they shelter. If, however, they are a pest to the owneis and occupants of holdings, they are a source of profit to the trappers. Take, for instance, the story of a young boundary rider on one of the big sheep properties. He had been burnt out of the property in which he had formerly been working for himself, and had lost practically everything, and in order to tide himself over his adversity had taken a job as a station hand. He was not at all lugubrious, for his employers had given him full liberty in his 'spare time to wage war against the rabbits, which he estimated were worth anything up to £2O a week to him by systematic trapping. He was not a bit doleful about the outlook, especially as he still had his motor-car, the one thing he had saved when the fire swept his property. The story of one of the regular trappers that they could earn, and were in cases actually earning up to £3 a day, was just as readily believed, after seeing the army of rabbits inimetii* ately skirting’ the roadside. Into this part of the country, according to all accounts, the rabbits, like a vast army on the march, have travelled from one of the other districts, possibly in search for fresh pastures. If, as it stated, they are nomadic, the curse which they represent, except, of course, to the trappers, is accentuated, for their fecundity, of course, is well known. The man on the land, who is spending both money and time in a fruitless endeavour to stem the tide of the rabbit must have read with a sardonic grin the controversy in the city press about the introduction of'the pest. What concerns him more is the problem of getting rid of it.