Rabbits were introduced to Australia in the 1800s by European settlers. Free from diseases and facing relatively few predators the wild populations grew rapidly reaching an estimated 10 billion in the 1920’s. The population is currently estimated to be 200 million. Molecular analysis of current populations reveals a patchwork of varying genetics in rabbits with six main regional groupings across Australia.

Environmental damage is now the biggest problem caused by feral rabbits in Australia. Feral rabbits compete for feed and shelter with native animals, but most environmental harm comes from how they graze, and because they help maintain feral predators. Feral rabbits can be an important part of the diet of feral cats, wild dogs, and foxes, sustaining their populations – which in turn, leads to increased predation of native threatened species.

Rabbits have clearly contributed to the decline or loss of the greater bilby, yellow-footed rock-wallaby, southern and northern hairy-nosed wombats, the mallee fowl, and the plains-wanderer. Numerous studies have shown that feral rabbits at even low population densities can prevent the regeneration of favoured native plant species. Compounding the problems is the fact that seeds of some plant species, particularly in dry regions, only germinate after exceptional weather (such as summer storms or localised flooding in wet years), which may only occur once every couple of decades. If feral rabbits are prevalent at those rare times, then the plants have lost their one in twenty-year opportunity to regenerate.

With rabbits being a perennially difficult pest to manage we use baiting, exclusion fencing and shooting primarily to control numbers