‘Eat the Invaders’, went to air on ABC TV and ABC iview on Tuesday January 7, 2025. Hosted by Tony Armstrong the first episode looked at rabbits, provocatively asking if ‘our unwanted ecological trash’ can be turned into ‘culinary gold’. It was a great show, highlighting the harm rabbits cause and provoking conversations about how to control them.
Of course, eating our way through feral pest problems will never work. Bruce Munday’s history of rabbits in Australia, ‘Those Wild Rabbits’, tells the story of rabbit commercialisation in Australia. It is a history we don’t want to repeat.
The learning from history that we do want to repeat is that well researched biocontrols do work and are our best hope at landscape scale rabbit control – though their effectiveness wanes over time and they’re never enough on their own. Instead of a commercial rabbit-meat industry, what rabbit control needs is a constant stream of research into new biocontrols and more help for land managers combatting the pest.
For more information:
- If you missed it, see the series on ABC iview here.
- Our media release is available here, pointing out the real needs as more research and help for land managers.
- ‘Those Wild Rabbits’ is available from Wakefield Press, here.
Image: Grotto (detail), Randy Polumbo, 2017, courtesy of the artist and Mona