Retorts

The Rabbit Wrangle

The article on the rabbit problem in your April 1991 issue makes interesting reading.

Drs Daugherty and Towns are clearly correct in debunking Dr Brockie's idea of using cats to solve the problem. Predators only work when the rabbit population is low, and they seek the easiest meal available.

However, Daugherty and Towns's own credibility suffers from their sweeping and unsubstantiated claims as to the cause of the land degradation problem.

"The present debate tacitly assumes the view that sheep farming is the best use of these areas."

Not true. Cattle and deer are increasingly grazed, and [numbers of] recreational permits are increasing. Your authors should know that runholders have a pastoral lease over the land and this restricts the type of activity on the land. Other uses have to be applied for and approved by the Crown.

"But the result of a century of sheepfarming has been the conversion of broad areas of grassland ecosystems into wastelands."

Was it grazing sheep that caused the problem or was it the unsatisfactory tenure imposed on the lessees that forced grazing practices leading to degradation? Government controls were the problem, not sheep or the lessees.

"Over-intensive farming of sheep...is the real problem."

The authors must think farmers are silly. Would anyone want to run down the carrying capacity of their land when that is their livelihood? No. Government policy changes, uncertainty of tenure, an approximately 50-year cycle of rabbit population explosions and perceived shared responsibility for the welfare of the land (the Crown owns it -- not the farmer) are the real problems.

Sell the land to the farmers; sell good husbandry to them and they will be free to pursue any worthwhile economic endeavour which also protects the land. They will also be entirely responsible for their land, take pride in it and enhance its value as other freehold farmers do throughout the country.

The authors are correct that land uses other than sheep farming should be considered. However it is not the government's role to do this. Government's role is to get out of farming and to provide a framework under which the farmer has freedom and responsibility to manage the land. This includes weed and pest control. We will all benefit from this approach.

Land management in the South Island high country is an immense challenge in many areas and is best tackled by the land holders themselves.

Don't blame the farmers or their livestock when the system is at fault.

Geoffrey Thomson, Chairman, Otago High Country Section, Federated Farmers of NZ