I Swerve for Rabbits
Comments: 7
When driving through the countryside in Australia, I’ll swerve to hit rabbits or foxes if I think it’s safe to do so. They’re major pests, both non-native, and I’ll willingly kill them any chance I get. Foxes require some thought as they can get hefty enough to cause damage to a vehicle, but with rabbits you rarely have to think twice. With any hit I’ll stop and make sure the animal is dead. (I’ve only ever had to finish off one; a fox which ran in front of the car of its own accord when I was travelling around the New South Wales south coast.)
Sorry if this sounds unduly cruel, but fair’s fair. I certainly don’t enjoy it one bit, in fact it’s quite sickening, but we’ll never be rid of the evil of rabbits and foxes if we’re squeamish about doing our bit to help.
This is a little background to try to explain why I’m slightly less averse to genetically engineered solutions to the rabbit problem than I am to, say, genetically engineered canola or corn. I’m by no means convinced, but my resistance to releasing GM’d organisms wavers somewhat when it comes to rabbits which are one of the truly terrible bastards of the Australian ecosystem.
Virus could sterilise Australia’s rabbits
by Graeme O’Neill, New ScientistAfter more than a decade of trying, Australian researchers have created a highly infectious virus that could wipe out the country’s rabbit pests by making them sterile.
[…]
From cats to camels, feral mammals cost Australia hundreds of millions of dollars each year in lost agricultural production and environmental damage, and have driven some native mammals and birds to extinction.
“Australia has lost more mammal species than the rest of the world combined in the past 400 years,” says project director Tony Peacock. But the prospect of genetically engineered viruses being released into the wild is still likely to spark a fierce debate.
My emphasis above.
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Posted to General Rants • 2002.08.08 (Thu) • 18:29
Comments
Posted by Jeff 2002.08.08, 22:23
I’m a little surprised that no one has commented on your pest-killing ways. Your post seems so, uh, ripe for comments, one way or another.
Posted by jh 2002.08.10, 21:16
Jeff — I admit I expected to get royally blasted for this one. I wasn’t sure whether it would be for my pest control methods or my ambivalence-verging-on-hypocrisy with regard to releasing genetically-modified organisms to fight this particular problem. Maybe it’s one of those horrified silences I seem to generate in social situations on a fairly regular basis.
I have to say though that I’m more worried about the hypocrisy. Opportunities to kill rabbits present themselves far less often than opportunities to be logically consistent, yet it’s the latter I’ve yet to master.
Posted by Jeff 2002.08.10, 21:40
I understand. This is one of these stories where I can see both sides (one of my basic philosophies these days is that nothing is black and white, despite what the media and political spinmeisters might want you to think).
I’ve gotta say, though, even if I thought of rabbits as pests (they aren’t in the wilds of DC), I’d have a hard time running over one on purpose. I even have trouble with our government-sanctioned “shoots” of deer (who look so cute wandering around our yard, eating our flowers). I just couldn’t do it. Now, mosquitoes, that an entirely different matter.
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Posted by John 2004.03.06, 13:20
I live in the plains of eastern Colorado on a couple of acres of high, dry, scrub land. I have tried to cultivate the area near my house with nice plants. I have to surround every single plant or garden with chicken wire to keep the rabbits out, and even then they sometimes can overpower that (bend it over and crawl in). What is the best way to kill them? Will a pellet gun work? My neighborhood covenants will not allow me to discharge a .22. Are there any effective traps? Please email your response, as I don’t visit this web page often.
John
Posted by Bassett 2004.03.06, 17:06
I swerve too, to hit any of the 70-million estimated ring-tailed possums which were introduced to New Zealand for a failed Victorian-era fur trade, but which are now a plague. The big, fluffy buggers eat the eggs of NZ’s often flightless native birds and the shoots of its increasingly rare native trees. A rabbit in Oz or possum in NZ is like a rat in plague-ridden Europe during the Middle Ages. While I admire and support those who go out of their way to help rabbits in their PROPER habitats of Europe and North America, or more importantly assisting bilbys in Oz or NZ’s kakapo (giant flightless parrot - I’m not kidding), introduced species in NZ and Oz are the second-only threat, apart from human land use, to a dwindling gene pool of specialised native species. That said, I’m a complete hypocrite and catch-and-release flyfish for brown and rainbow trout - other introduced species. But the damage they did is long done - the extinction of the native NZ grayling (that’s a fish, by the way). Read “The Future Eaters” by Dr Tim Flannery for a broad natural history of the affects of Aboriginal, Maori and European settlement on Oz and NZ. Flannery also has a book out on the changes wrought on North America as the result of waves of settlement throughout history which should be of interest for those on the other side of the big pond. - Bassett
Posted by Vincent 2005.12.17, 20:00
It’s safe to hit those cute animals but unethical to do so. Please don’t kill them.
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