Australia's battle with the bunny They may look cute and cuddly
but rabbits have been a persistent pest in Australia for 150
years. So are we any closer to eradicating this ecological
nightmare? Gardeners and growers everywhere, watch your lettuce
patches! Australia is being hit by a bunny invasion and these
marauders aren't the chocolate kind. After years of battling
this pest, Australia is now facing a fresh increase in rabbit
numbers. Rabbits have been spotted in rising numbers in the
Atherton tablelands in far north Queensland, and the Northern
Rivers region in New South Wales. The latest battlefront is
Macquarie Island, a subantarctic island halfway between
Australia and Antarctica. Here, rabbit numbers have swelled from
under 20,000 to 130,000 in only six years, and have eaten much
of the native bushland. "You could compare [the island] to a
golf course," says Dr Arko Lucieer from the University of
Tasmania, co-author of a recent paper published in the Journal
of Applied Ecology analysing the effect of