The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY. FEBRUARY 12, 1910 RABBITS VERSUS SHEEP.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2734, 12 February 1910, Page 4

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY. FEBRUARY 12, 1910 RABBITS VERSUS SHEEP.

In view of the interest which is being taken in the rabbit question by Poverty Bay i>astoralists at the present time, it is useful to note .the conclusions which have been arrived at by the people of Victoria after thirty years’ experience ot bunny and his methods. The other day we were informed by cable that a contract with the Admiralty to supply 100,COO lbs. of tinned rabbits to the Navy could not be fulfilled by the Victorian firm which undertook it, and the Agent-General fears ‘The episode will damage the credit of Victoria’s trade.” It appears that last winter’s floods gave the coup-de-grace to rabbits in that part of Australia. They were drowned in hundreds of thousands, and when they gathered for refuge on islands of high ground they were slaughtered. Therefore the representatives of tinning factories now scour the country in vain looking for rabbits to fill the tins and the contracts. At the meeting of the Denton Hat Mills Company the chairman (Mr Beazley, M.L.A.) complained that the price of rabbit-fur is constantly rising. The facts referred to lead the “Argus” to review the position as regards the rabbit. Our contemporary says:—

The position is. on the whole, matter for congratulation. The value of rabbits and hares in Victoria’s export trade is not to be despised; in 1907 the frozen rabbits and hares sent away from the States were worth £155,000, which represented a good deal of employment. But the rabbit is greedy and prolific; he spreads in a devastating fashion if the hand of repression is lifted from him, and he then steals the grass meant for the sheep. A sum of £155.000 is small compared with a wool clip worth nearly four millions sterling and an export trade in frozen mutton worth between £400,000 and £500,000. Rabbits may compete with sheep in appetite, but not in pastoral value. They cannot be permitted to graze the same lands as flocks and herds. There is stony and hilly country in which rabbits could be kept if they were rigorously excluded from the more fertile fields below; but perhaps it would be wiser to continue the work of extermination even there. Memories of the rabbit plague are still too lively, and the dangers of fresh depredations are still too great, to. permit Victoria to nourish the rabbit instead of harrying him. So long as there is any question of a choice being made between the sheep and the rabbit, the latter will have few friends. It is better to lose a contract than to relax our watchfulness against what was, and still may be, so formidable a pest. When it is remembered that Victoria has spent half a million of money on rabbit destruction the conclusions of the “Argus” can be well understood and they should give added force to the agitation which is at present being maintained with a view to keeping the übiquitous rodent from obtaining a- footing in the pastures of this district.