Abstract
TO-DAY every country is shy of introducing any mammal or bird which is not already a permanent resident, recognising that it may introduce a fresh element upsetting the balance of Nature of its land. Great Britain has had experience of the black and brown rats for centuries, perhaps accidental introductions; and has lately incurred liabilities, which may be enormous, by the purposeful introduction of the American musk-rat, already the major pest of Central Europe; and the escape of the grey squirrel from the London Zoo. The rabbit also is held by Hinton to have been an introduction by the Normans; there are no mentions of warrens in Domesday Book. The English sparrow is only too well known in the United States and other countries. All pale into insignificance when compared with the rabbit in Australia, which, if control fails, will assuredly devastate a continent. The earliest arrivals, probably domesticated forms, were passengers on the first fleet of settlers 149 years ago. In Tasmania, rabbits were “running about some of the large estates in thousands” by 1827. Many of the smaller islands were also being stocked to provide food for shipwrecked mariners. On the mainland such areas where they flourished were hemmed in by forests, containing natural enemies, carnivorous mammals and birds. Then in 1859, two dozen wild rabbits were introduced to a Geelong estate, on which 20,000 were killed in the next six years, an estimated stock of 10,000 being left. To-day, three quarters of the continent is over-run.
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G., J. The Rabbit in Australia. Nature 137, 806–807 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137806a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137806a0