KABBITS. 101 



The economic waste caused by the vast increase of rabbits in 

 New Zealand is incalculable, and certainly represents a loss in the 

 stock-carrying capacity of the country which probably runs every 

 year into millions of pounds. It is not only that they eat up 

 food which would support some millions more sheep than are at 

 present reared, but they destroy large areas of country, and yield 

 very little return for the damage they do. The annual export 

 of approximately three million rabbits, valued at (in pre-war times) 

 about 70,000, and of some eight millions of skins, valued at 

 about 115,000, is all the return they give, but it represents only 

 a small proportion of the pest. In all parts where rabbits abound 

 their destruction entails a heavy expense on the occupiers of the 

 land. There are no data available to enable any one to estimate 

 how many rabbits are destroyed every year, but far more are 

 killed by phosphorus than by trapping. The latter method alone 

 furnishes any statistical data; the former is an unknown quantity, 

 but it represents a very large figure. 



Probably the most ghastly exhibition of the work of rabbits is 

 to be found in the grass-denuded districts of Central Otago, parts 

 of which have been reduced to the condition of a desert. It is 

 improbable that this state of affairs could have been brought about 

 by rabbits alone. Before their advent the runholders who had 

 possession of the arid regions, in which the rainfall probably 

 averages 10 in. to 12 in. annually, and certainly never exceeds 

 15 in., were doing the^r best to denude the surface of the ground 

 by overstocking with sheep and by frequent burning. The latter 

 was resorted to because many of the large tussock-forming grasses, 

 especially such as the silver-tussock (Poa caespitosa), yielded coarse 

 and rather unpalatable fodder, but after burning the tufts a crop 

 of tender green leaves sprung up, which were very readily eaten. 

 Unfortunately the burning not only got rid of most of the coarse 

 growth of the tussocks, but it also swept off the numerous bottom 

 grasses which occupied the intervening spaces, which were the 

 mainstay of the depasturing flocks. Even before the rabbits 

 arrived the work of denudation of the grass covering had been 

 proceeding apace through the causes mentioned. Thus Buchanan, 

 writing in 1865, said, "It is no wonder that many of the runs 

 require 8 acres to feed one sheep, according to an official estimate." 

 Mr. Petrie thought this an unduly severe estimate, " as in the mid- 



