Stymied Solutions for the Pest: Farmers, Graziers, Rabbits and the Search for a Biological Agent, 1880–1908

Abstract

During the late nineteenth century huge numbers of rabbits swept across south-east Australia causing widespread damage. Farming and grazing sheep and cattle became difficult on many properties, but the rabbit industry boomed. For farmers and graziers who tired of efforts to reduce rabbit numbers by shooting, trapping or poisoning, the solution seemed to lie in total extermination with a biological agent. In the late 1880s, the New South Wales (NSW) government took up their cause and offered a £25,000 prize for a biological remedy for the rabbit problem, but the prize was not awarded. Twenty years later farmers and graziers took matters into their own hands and hired the noted French scientist, Dr Jan Danysz, to provide a biological agent to exterminate the rabbits. Danysz's employment and experiments became a battle between sectional interests. Rural workers, who had begun harvesting rabbits, and rabbit industry investors opposed the Danysz virus for financial reasons, while farmers and graziers supported it because they wanted the rural landscape to support their traditional economic practices. While the NSW government supported landowners, other state governments and the federal government opposed the experiments.