Rabbits in Australia Australian Feral Rabbit

Photo: Feral European Rabbit

The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is a small mammal with long, muscular hind legs and shorter front legs. It has long upright ears, large protruding eyes, soft greyish-grown fur, and short fluffy tails with a white underside. An adult rabbit weighs 0.8 to 2.3kg and is about 40 cm in length. Rabbits hop using a galloping gait, where the back paws land together forward and outside of the front paws.

The European rabbit is a voracious feeder, grazing on a variety of grasses, forbs, scrubs. It sometimes consuming the entire plant, including the roots and seeds. It may also strip the bark off trees and shrubs. This destructive behaviour prevents the regeneration of vegetation. Except in very dry conditions, the rabbit gets all the moisture it needs from its food.

Today, Rabbits can be found in many different areas of Australia, ranging from deserts to coastal plains. Their distribution is only restricted by this their ability to find soils suitable for digging their underground in burrows.

Rabbits become sexually active at 3 t0 8 months of age. In just 18 months, two rabbits can produce as many as 180 additional rabbits. A rabbit can live for up to 9 years.

First Rabbits in Australia Why were Rabbits Introduced to Australia?

There were no rabbits whatsoever in Australia until they were introduced by European settlers commencing in 1788. The first rabbits, numbering just five, arrived in Australia with the First Fleet in 1788. By the early 1800s, there are occasional written references to rabbits in Tasmania and New South Wales. Initially, they were bred in confined enclosures for food and appear to have had no noticeable impact on the local environment.

In 1859 Thomas Austin of Barwon Park of Winchelsea in Victoria, an avid hunter back in his homeland of England, imported seventy-two partridges, some sparrows, twelve grey rabbits, five hares and some domestic rabbits so that he could continue his hunting hobby in Australia.

He built well-fenced rabbit enclosures on his vast property at Winchelsea and even hired a gamekeeper to look after his animals. Much to his surprise and praise from his neighbours, his rabbits multiplied exponentially. In just six years, his rabbit herd had increased from only two dozen animals to over 20,000!

Given the massive increase in the rabbit population at Barwon Park, it was only a matter of time before some of them escaped into the wild.

There several theories as to how this may have happened. The first is that the Barwon River, which flowed next to the Austin's property, flooded, the rabbit enclosure fences were washed away, permitting the rabbits to escape. Another is that local people cut holes in the rabbit fences to steal the rabbits on the property. The rabbits may have escaped through these openings or may even have been encouraged to escape by the local people to catch them more easily elsewhere. The final theory is that when the Duke of Edinburgh visited Barwon Park on the 5th of December 1867 as the guest of the wealthy Mr. Austin, a hole was cut in the fence, and rabbits chased out of the hole so that there would be a spectacular abundance of rabbits when the Duke went rabbit shooting. The local newspapers report that the Duke stayed as a guest of the Austin's at Barwon Park and went hunting that afternoon. Over 1,000 rabbits were shot, of which the Duke is credited with shooting 416. He went hunting again the following morning and shot another 86. This is probably the most likely explanation of the rabbit plague that followed because a large number of rabbits were released, allowing them to establish themselves in Australia. (The newspaper engraving shows the rabbit fence on the right).

The rabbits that escaped that day multiplied rapidly in the Australian Outback, which was similar to their original places of origin in Spain and Portugal (The ancient Romans took them all over Europe from there).

Within just twenty years, they had reached Queensland over 1,500 kilometres away. By 1910 they had spread to their present range covering most of Australia except the wet tropics. By 1920 it s was estimated that there were over 10 billion rabbits. (This is what they mean when they say "breed like rabbits").

There are about 200 million rabbits in Australia today.

Impact of Rabbits on the Australian Environment Why Are Rabbits a Pest in Australia?

There are over 200 million rabbits in Australia today. Feral European rabbits have had a catastrophic effect on the Australian ecosystem. They are the single most significant cause of the extinction of numerous native plants and animals.Rabbits have been declared the number one pest in Australia because of the severe damage they are causing to the Australian ecosystem.

Their major impacts are:
• Rabbits overgraze the land to the point that native plants die, leading to the wide-scale extinction of native plants.
• The loss of native plants contribute to the decline and in some case the extinction of native animals such as the bilby and the bandicoot.
• Loss of vegetation results in soil erosion. The exposed soil is easily carried away by wind and rain, leaving it degraded and unsuitable for new plant growth. Soil washed away by rain typically ends up deposited in creeks, streams, and rivers, disrupting the aquatic ecosystem of these waterways.
• Rabbits also eat pastures put down by farmers for their sheep and cattle flocks and drink from water supplies set aside for livestock.
• During droughts, when food is scarce, rabbits dig up and eat the roots and tubers of plants, thereby killing them.
• Rabbits threaten native burrowing animals, such as the bilby and the burrowing bettong, by evicting them from their burrows and moving in.

Rabbit Control in Australia Rabbit Eradication Programs

From as early as 1887, just twenty years after the rabbit was first released at Barwon Park, rabbit numbers had grown to plague proportions in Victoria and New South Wales. Western Australians were so alarmed that they built a rabbit-proof fence 1,800 kilometres long to protect their state from a rabbit invasion. This didn't really work because rabbits jumped over the fence, burrowed under it, or humans left gates open, letting them in. Other early methods of controlling the rabbit populations were shooting, poisoning, and digging up burrows.

Two animals prey on rabbits. These are the native dingo and the introduced European red fox. These predators, however, have made little impact on the huge rabbit population.
By 1950 the rabbit population in Australia was estimated to be over 600 million. There were 80 rabbits for every single person living in Australia at the time. In this year, the myxoma virus was deliberately released into the wild rabbit population resulting in a rapid decline to about 100 million. Initially, mosquitoes were the key transmitters of the disease, but they were unsuitable for the drier parts of Australia, so the European and Spanish fleas were brought to Australia to spread the virus more widely. Some rabbits were resistant to the virus, and rabbit numbers started to increase once again. By 1991 there were an estimated 300 million rabbits in Australia. In 1995 Australian scientists were testing the calicivirus, which accidentally escaped and fortunately has been doing its job, killing only rabbits.