How To Deal With 287 Million Wild Rabbits Of Australian Farmers - Farming Documentary

Hello, my friends, with only 13 wild rabbits were brought from England in 1859 by a rich man named Thomas Austin. Since then to this day, the overpopulation of wild rabbits and their negative impact on nature and agriculture has always left the government and many farmers in Australia with a headache to find solution countermeasures. Over the past 100 years, governments and farmers in Australia have adopted a variety of measures to control wild rabbit populations, such as building fences and destroying rabbit burrows. Even biological control measures such as infecting rabbits with viruses and releasing them into the wild have been applied. However, due to favorable living conditions and extremely fast reproduction, the number of wild rabbits in Australia has always increased rapidly, even though at one point 98% of the wild rabbits in this continent were exterminated. Female wild rabbits usually start breeding as soon as they reach 5 to 6 months of age. Currently, most female feral rabbits in Australia usually give birth to four litters a year and each litter usually has about 7 to 10 pups born. Baby wild rabbits spend most of their time living in burrows and they are only allowed out when the mother wild rabbit feels safe. These baby rabbits will feed on their mother's milk for about 4 weeks before starting to nibble on food. According to research by the Center for Invasive Species Solutions in Australia, most wild rabbits will separate from their mothers and begin an independent life as soon as they are weaned. It is estimated that there are currently about 287 million wild rabbits living in Australia, of which about 177 million wild rabbits are born each year. Hundreds of millions of rabbits are distributed over 71% of Australia's land area, they are found anywhere there is grass and can burrow. In the wild, young wild rabbits are often the favorite prey of carnivores such as dingoes, feral cats or crows. However, the number of wild rabbits killed by predators is a tiny fraction of the total number of wild rabbits living in Australia. After about 4 to 5 weeks, these wild rabbits have weaned and started a new independent life, they will burrow and live wherever there is a food source and less disturbances like the backyard, in the garden, on the hillside… Basically, anywhere in Australia could be an ideal habitat for this highly adaptable animal, except in areas with a lot of clay and sand like in the northeast of South Australia. Currently, New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria are the states with the wildest rabbits in Australia, in which, NSW is home to about 65 million wild rabbits. The negative impacts that hundreds of millions of feral rabbits have on Australia's ecosystems include the depletion of vegetation and natural grasslands associated with overgrazing by wild rabbits. It is said that just one wild rabbit can make the entire lawn at an international standard football field impossible to grow. An adult wild rabbit usually weighs about 3.3 pounds and needs to consume 7% of their body weight each day. The burrowing habits of hundreds of millions of wild rabbits in Australia also cause severe erosion and destruction of the landscape in which they live. In addition, other negative effects of wild rabbits on Australia can be mentioned as: habitat competition with native animals. Hundreds of millions of wild rabbits also threaten some 322 species of flora and fauna and cost the Australian government more than $215 million a year. To this day, Australia's wild rabbit population is 11 times larger than the country's population, and they have always been a major problem for the ecosystem and agriculture. In response to rampant wild rabbits, the Australian government allows anyone to hunt them in unlimited numbers. In addition, the government also encourages people to organize wild rabbit hunts to reduce the number of this invasive species. Along with that, biological control measures are always being studied to find viruses that can kill wild rabbits in large numbers. In short, just like the wild boar problem in the United States, the wild rabbit problem in Australia will still cause headaches for the government and farmers for many years to come to find effective control measures for this invasive species. In addition to feral rabbits, feral cats are also an invasive species that causes many negative impacts on Australia's ecosystems. It is estimated that there are currently 6.3 million feral cats living in Australia. Each year, millions of feral cats in Australia kill around 1.1 billion mammals, 399 million birds, and about 93 million frogs. According to a 2010 study, each feral cat in Australia kills around 740 wildlife each year. Feral cats threaten the survival of more than 100 native species in Australia. They have caused the extinction of a number of ground-dwelling birds and small to medium-sized mammals. In addition, they are also the main cause of the decline of many endangered species of animal strains such as pangolins or bandicoots. Currently, trapping and hunting feral cats are the most commonly used solutions to control this invasive species. Every year, about 63,000 feral cats are killed in Australia, in addition to tens of thousands of other feral cats trapped and sent to animal shelters across the country.