Excitable Media: Old Wall: Rabbit-proof Fence

The first serious infestation of European rabbits in Australia can be traced to Thomas Austin, who released 24 wild rabbits on his property in Southern Victoria in 1859. To improve hunting prospects, Australian gentry had already released European foxes into the wild, and rabbits were the next logical step.

Within ten years of the 1859 introduction, the original 24 had multiplied so fast that 2 million a year could be shot or trapped without having any noticable effect. Rabbits reached the New South Wales border in 1870, and fifteen years later they entered Queensland. By the turn of the century the citizens of Western-most Western Australia were the last remaining rabbit-proof holdout, and decided to erect a wire and wood barrier (or "Rabbit Proof Fence") to stem the rabbity flood.

But there were so many starving, feral rabbits headed West that in the end the fence could not hold them. As the rabbit corpses piled up along the fence, it became possible for the rabbits to simply walk across the makeshift rabbit-body bridge and into the fertile Westernmost Western Australia farmland.

The effects of rabbits on the Australian ecosystem were (and are) quite devastating. Nearly one eighth of all mammal species in Australia are now extinct, and the loss of plant species will probably never be fully appreciated. Swarms (herds? bevys?) of rabbits cause huge damage to Australia's agricultural economy and are responsible for some serious erosion problems. Estimates suggest that the Australian rabbit population peaked during the 1930's at around 600 million, but through somewhat effective disease control projects (like the introduction of myxomatosis) the rabbit population is back down to around 150 million or so (mutant myxomatosis-immune) ravenous European rabbits.

Because the rabbits had spread to every corner of the continent, the ironically named Rabbit Proof Fence fell into disrepair until the late 1950's when it was resurrected, refurbished and renamed the State Barrier fence. It divided the fertile Westernmost cropland from the more arid desert.

A few years later, when herds of emus started threatening Westernmost Western Australia croplands, the fence was born again as the Emu Proof Fence. It has proved more successful in keeping out the emus (vis a vis the rabbits), however occasionaly enough emus die in one place to allow other emus to climb their corpses and cross the barrier. As one farmer describes, "and of course emus do an terrible lot of damage to crops or fences . . . especially fences. They roll in the crop as well, and if you try and chase them off they spread out and they great big feet they smash down all the wheat as they run through, and if you've got 2 or 3 hundred emus running through a crop they can do a lot a damage."