For most Australians, our great rabbit plagues live at a safe distance.
They exist in black-and-white photographs. In grainy footage of endless movement across paddocks. In stories from grandparents who remember entire hillsides covered, which, from a distance, appeared as if the ground itself were alive.
That scale of environmental and agricultural devastation is hard to imagine now – and that is precisely the danger.
Right now, Australia is quietly sliding back towards the conditions that made those plagues possible. All because the federal Government has not continued to fund the one thing that would prevent it – biocontrol.
It’s rare in invasive species management that anything is regarded as a ‘silver bullet’. But in Australia, biocontrol in the form of rabbit-specific viruses has been exactly that.
In the 1950s, shooting and poisoning could not keep up with the population explosions across the country. Until a virus called myxomatosis was introduced and rabbit numbers crashed in some areas by 99 per cent. It was nothing short of transformative.
But over time, the rabbits that survived passed on their resistance, and the silver bullet’s effectiveness waned. The science showed we need a new virus about every 10 years to remain effective and on top of rabbit numbers.
That warning was taken seriously. A new biocontrol, calicivirus, was developed and released just in time. The most recent national release, eight years ago, wiped out around 60 per cent of the rabbit population.
Now, exactly as predicted, numbers are climbing again as resistance grows in the remaining rabbits. But this time, there is no next biocontrol safety net in the pipeline.
Not because the scientists aren’t ready to take on this challenge. A plan was released in 2024, backed by the CSIRO and leading experts, and endorsed by every Australian government.
But for some reason that defies common sense, the program that should deliver our next biocontrol has remained unfunded since 2022. We don’t even have a good handle on rabbit numbers either because funding for national population monitoring was also stopped in 2022.
That complacency is dangerous.
History shows us what happens when rabbit numbers surge. They strip native ground cover, trigger erosion, damage cultural sites and push already stressed native species over the edge. Rabbits were a key driver in the collapse of small mammals across arid and semi-arid Australia, removing food and shelter and leaving species exposed to predators. Their population booms have been linked to irreversible declines – and, in some cases, extinctions.
Today, rabbits already number more than 200 million across Australia, threatening over 300 native species and costing agriculture more than $200 million per year.
The federal government is exploring future technologies such as gene drive, which may one day manage rabbits but that technology is decades from making a difference on the ground. It will unfortunately not stop the rabbit populations that are building as you read this sentence – in paddocks, reserves and deserts across the country.
Those rabbit plagues Australians once thought were safely behind us will not feel like ancient history for much longer. Already landholders from across the country are reporting numbers higher than they have seen in 30 years.
And as numbers climb, the damage will become politically unavoidable. When that happens, governments will be judged not on what they promise in hindsight – but on what they failed to fund when the science, the warnings and the solutions were already on the table.
Developing a new rabbit biocontrol should be a national priority regardless of who is in the Lodge or what other pressures are on the budget. Australia’s plants, animals and rivers will pay the price of dithering and delay.
Jack Gough, CEO Invasive Species Council
Photo: Rabbits around a waterhole at the myxomatosis trial enclosure on Wardang Island in 1938. National Archives of Australia.
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