A Country Flooded With Rabbits
In the late nineteenth century a small release of European rabbits in Victoria grew into one of the most rapid animal spreads ever recorded. Within a decade Australians were killing millions each year without slowing the growth. The animals moved across states, consumed crops and native plants, and altered vast rural regions.
This account follows how they arrived, how they multiplied, and how governments attempted to contain an invasion that reshaped the continent.
How the Rabbits First Arrived
Rabbits reached Australia in 1788 with the First Fleet, carried as food by the crews that established the first European settlement. By the 1840s colonists kept rabbits for eating and for sale, and thefts appeared in court records. The turning point came in October 1859 when landowner Thomas Austin received twenty four rabbits from England and released them on his property near Winchelsea for hunting.
His request had included both wild gray rabbits and common domestic rabbits. Some biologists later noted that interbreeding between these types may have produced rabbits well suited to Australian conditions. Their reproduction rate was extraordinary. Within ten years Australians were able to kill two million a year without lowering the overall count.
The Scale of the Ecological Damage
Rabbits spread faster than any other recorded mammal. They grazed heavily, removed vegetation cover, and exposed soil to wind erosion. This reduced the ability of land to absorb water and slowed natural regrowth. Parts of the livestock industry were affected because less land remained suitable for sheep and cattle.
Native plants such as eremophila and young Australian trees were destroyed in many places because seedlings were eaten before they could grow. Native animals including the pig footed bandicoot and the greater bilby declined as they competed for the same plants the rabbits consumed.
Efforts to Stop the Expansion
By 1901 authorities attempted a major physical barrier. Western Australia built three connected rabbit proof fences that took six years to complete. The first ran more than one thousand miles from north to south and remains the longest continuous fence in the world. Two additional fences extended the line across southern regions. The effort failed because rabbits had already crossed sections before completion and many dug under the wire. In the early 1950s the government approved the release of myxomatosis.
The virus caused skin growths, blindness, fever, and death in infected rabbits. Within two years the national population dropped from about six hundred million to one hundred million. Survivors later produced offspring with partial resistance and numbers rose again. Pet rabbits remained vulnerable because vaccination was not permitted. Today an estimated two hundred million rabbits live across Australia. Fencing, shooting, trapping, and targeted biological controls continue as routine measures across affected regions.
In Australia a few released rabbits grew into one of the fastest animal invasions ever recorded, stripping land, hurting farms, and forcing governments to try fences and even released disease.
It all began with food animals on the First Fleet and a hunter who wanted… pic.twitter.com/SivMAB6Ypa
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