Environmental advocates are calling for the federal government to commit to new funding for rabbit control, as population numbers grow. Rabbit numbers in Australia have grown to nearly two hundred million, and advocates say new biological control measures must be funded to address the issue.
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00:00We have been successful at getting those numbers down, but that is relied, as you mentioned
00:06on those biocontrols, myxomatosis and calicivirus then introduced in the 90s.
00:12So the numbers seem huge, but where they were, it was a whole lot bigger and a whole lot
00:18greater impact.
00:19And our concern really is that now, as we start to see less efficacy from that calicivirus
00:25that was released about 10 years ago in the early 2010s, that we're going to start to
00:30see real booms in the numbers of rabbits, particularly on the eastern seaboard where
00:34there's been a couple of very good years in terms of seasonal conditions.
00:37All right.
00:38Explain that to me then.
00:39These viruses were introduced to control the numbers.
00:43Why are they not still working?
00:47So with any virus, I mean, that original myxomatosis virus released in the 1950s had about 99%
00:54reduction in the rabbit population, but then rabbits breed very, very fast.
00:58You have to take out about 90% every year just to keep the population stable.
01:03So the numbers started to grow, grow back as the ones that survived were the ones that
01:07had that resistance to the virus.
01:09So then the CSIRO did a huge amount of work to develop a new effective virus.
01:14And that calicivirus was released in 1995, despite a whole heap of campaigning from the
01:20rabbit meat and fur trade in the 1980s to stop it happening.
01:24And again, there was a knockdown of about 98% of the rabbit population.
01:28But as you know, we know with things like other viruses, with flus that might have been
01:35huge human pandemics a few hundred years ago and now just cause a sniffle, the rabbits
01:40that survive are the rabbits that were able to, had some resistance to that virus.
01:46And over a period of about 10 years with these new viruses, it finds that while it continues
01:50to have some suppressant effect, it doesn't hold the population in check.
01:55And that's why people across Australia are starting to see rabbits in places that they
01:59probably haven't seen them for a number of decades.
02:01So Jack, is other scientists working on another virus?
02:07There's some ad hoc work going on, certainly within CSIRO and within some of our universities.
02:13But the concern that we have is that in 2022, funding for what's called the National Rabbit
02:18Biocontrol Pipeline, it ended and there was no commitment to ongoing funding.
02:25And so right now there is no coordinated national science effort to develop that next biocontrol
02:31tool for rabbits in terms of a virus.
02:34And that means that we are relying on maybe a bit of luck, but not much strategy when
02:39it comes to actually dealing with one of the greatest threats to our agriculture, but also
02:43our environment.
02:44Because let's remember, in terms of species on the brink of extinction, over 300 species
02:50on the brink of extinction are directly threatened by rabbits.
02:54This is a serious environmental pest.
02:56And without that funding, we're concerned that we're going to see numbers escalate.
03:00And that's a real blind spot from the Albanese government that needs to be fixed.
03:03Jack, you just made the case for it, but there will be people that say, leave the bunnies
03:07alone.
03:08What's the problem?
03:11Look, unfortunately, no one likes to see animals killed.
03:15The sad reality is that we have choices to make in Australia.
03:18And that's the choice between urgently and effectively and humanely reducing the numbers
03:23of some of our invasive species, whether that's rabbits or feral deer or foxes, or seeing
03:28some of our native species go extinct.
03:30So this is a choice that we have to make.
03:32We also know that the impact of rabbits on agriculture is immense.
03:36About $200 million cost every year with just the numbers at the level they are at the moment.
03:42So this is an enormous cost to agriculture.
03:45And in terms of our environment, they eat down native plants, they stop regenerating,
03:49they overgraze and mean that some of our native animals don't actually have food sources.
03:54So rabbits are an enormous threat to our native wildlife and actually in terms of number of
04:00species, and this surprises a lot of people, are a bigger threat in terms of extinctions
04:05than cats or foxes or even altered fire regimes.
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