MAINLY ABOUT RABBITS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 500, 21 January 1949, Page 19

MAINLY ABOUT RABBITS

BH

SUNDOWNER

MAINLY ABOUT RABBITS

VERYONE who travels ‘through Otago and Southland expects to see rabbits. He expects to see them dead on the roads, dead on the fences, and so much alive over the fences that the hillsides seem to have a pulse. That is the expectation and the still popular belief, and there was a time when it bore some relation to the facts. To-day it is just a legend. In a drive of 250 miles through Central and West

Otago I may have seen a hundred rabbits altogether — 20 or 30 in a creek-bed between Luggate and

Lowburn, about as many in the bed of

the Manuherikia, and little scampers, of twos and threes for about a mile on either side of Raes Junction. In Southland the situation was a little different. I saw rabbits wherever I saw gorse hedges-espe-cially the old-style hedge with a_ sodwall foundation — but three out of four were only a quarter or half grown, and a surprising number

were babies sitting quite still at the mouths of burrows. I know that these babies will themselves have babies before winter if they live, and I know that rabbits are not very active in the middle of the day when I did most of my travelling. But I am not blind to the other signs of occupation, and don't have to see rabbits to know when I am in their country. No one does if rabbits for many years were his only cur-rency-if a pocket-knife meant ten skins, a new tie twenty, a rifle or a visit to town two or three hundred. I am as little likely to miss the signs of rabbits to-day as I am to forget the jingles every rabbiter, musterer, shearer, and shed-hand specialised in 50 years ago: — oF rabbits young and rabbits old, : rabbits timid and rabbits bold, Of rabbits tender and rabbits tough, O thank the Lord we've had enough. * * *

RABBITS ARE POLITICAL

DID however meet a man who told me that he had caught 2,000 rabbits last winter on one small block, and another whose tally was 2,500. I was assured that £2000 was not an impossible return for a man with a good block. and was

supplied with details to prove that one run-holder had made

‘£10,000, less the cost of poison, and the wages and rations of 16 men for eight months at £1 each a day. But I soon found that rabbit stories were like all hunting stories in this respect-that they varied according to

the weather, the mood, and ~.e ioseginn' ation of the teller; and unlike them in this other respect-that they were 50 per cent. political. Whatever is the case in other parts of the Dominion rabbits in Otago and Southland are party politics. If you farm in a Rabbit Board area, rabbits will prevent your right hand from knowing what your left hand is doing. If you are in a free area they will keep you awake at nights wondering what your rates will be when your holding is gathered in too. And whether your representative in Parliament is as wise as a serpent or as harmless as a dove he will not escape accusations that he has told one story in Wellington and another over your fence. But if you

are so foolish yourself as to seek election to your Board, you will become a _ rabbit-farmer, or a = ~ netting manipulator, or a trafficker in carrots, or a wink-and-nod man for some purpose other than the speedy and complete destruction of every buck, doe, runner, and sucker above or _ below ground in your terri- ' tory.

So at least I gathered by talking first to a free-area farmer, then to a Boardarea farmer, then to a rabbiter, then to a farmer-rabbiter, then to a Board member, then to a Board employee. It is true that farmers’ troubles are seldom so bad as they sound, but after a few days discussing rabbits from all these different angles, I found myself wondering what had so greatly reduced the rabbit population already, and whether if it is my luck to return to Otago ten years hence I shall see any rabbits at all out of the museum. = ae a

KILLING AND SELLING

-- ~~ SOMEHOW missed it in the newspapers, but was told in Clyde that Parliament had approved of changes in the Rabbit Act that will make rabbits "as\tare as that bird they’ve just discovered in Southland." "Re-discovered," I said.

"Yes, that’s right; found again. The first for 50 years. Well that’s how

rabbits will be." "And what will happen then?" "The farmers who, are crying out now will be down on their knees thanking God. They’ll be running ten sheep for every six or seven they run now, and if they stop their burning this country will be what it was when the first settlers saw it." "Do you think the tussocks will come back?" — (continued on next page)

Through N.Z. To-day

(continued from previous page) "On the flats-yes. Perhaps not on the rocky faces. But it will be clover and English grasses then, with irrigation in a big way." "You're optimistic about the killing?" "Absolutely. This killer policy’ will root them right out." "Why afen’t the farmers rushing it?" "Because rabbits mean free cash to them. Their wool goes through the firms, but the rabbits are their own." "But if they had no rabbits they would not be afraid of the firms. They would have far more sheep." "Half as many again. But that doesn’t buy a new car or a new radio this year. They will of course come to it."

"You think they will?" "They will have to : under the new Act, But in a year or two they’ll be wondering why they ever resisted it.’’ "Do many resist?" "Most farmers resist , what is new. If they }don't resist it they don’t, support it. But they’re not fools; and when they — have had time to think about it they are for it if it is for them." "What about the rabbiters?" 3 "Their day is doneexcept as wage-earners for the Boards. I’m sorry for them, because their big money hasq never been easy money. But the country can’t afford yabbits, and therefore it can’t afford rab--biters or rabbit dealers."

"There is the existing population of rabbits to dispose of." "Not by individuals or firms. ©The essential point of the new policy is that ‘rabbits will be valueless. It must never again be worth while to let a single ‘rabbit live." * a % :

CATCH THE THIEF

T all sounded convincing to me till I discussed it with a sheep-farmer who had killed. his rabbits years ago and wanted to know why he should now be taxed for neighbours who had neglected theirs. "The Boards have power to put a crippling rate on land-all land-though

one man's land may be clear and another’s badly infested. But the man

who farms his rabbits is an outlaw among his neighbours. They know who

he is, and there would be no difficulty in dealing with him. Rating everybody ‘is like levying a tax on a district every time someone commits theft. Let them catch the thief and collect from him." "You think rabbit farmers are not very numerous?" "I’m sure they’re not, Farmers hate rabbits. They hate them all the year round. They’re as likely to farm them as bee-farmers are to cultivate foul-brood and fruit-farmers to breed codlin moths. Rabbits are vermin to us, and don’t forget that they do more than eat grass."

"T’ve seen what they can do to young crops." "I was thinking of trees. Every farmer should plant more trees, and most would if there were no rabbits. But rabbits mean netting fences, so the trees never go in." "But you'll now be able to put them in. When the Boards have killed the tabbits the fencing will not be necessary." "T’ll believe that when I see it. What I’ve seen so far leaves me with some doubts." "Have you seen the bull-dozers at work on the warrens?" "I’ve heard that bull-dozers have been used on-sandy flats; also rotary hoes.

But how far would they get in these gullies?" "I asked them that question in Central Otago, and the answer was that guns, ferrets, dogs, and cyanide gas would do the job where bull-dozers couldn’t be used." "That may have been their answer. What I want to see is the dead rabbits." "I’m told that you don’t see them after the bull-dozers and rotary hoesthat they’re smothered in the warrens and stay there," "How old are you?" "Nearly as old as you, I should think." "Don’t you think we're both old enough not to be bull-dozed ‘ourselves by propaganda? I’ve seen rabbits come and I’ve seen them go. They almost disappeared in this district between 1900 and 1910. No one knew why. Now we have to subsidise the districts they like better."