A recent unpopularity contest focusing on Otago’s many and varied pests ranked rabbits at the top – as much for their ever-present potential to “wipe” farmers out again as for their current numbers.
The Otago Regional Council survey ranked feral cats as second-most worrisome pest in Otago, a whisker ahead of wilding pines (now known as “pest conifers”).
Further down the list of imported riffraff were possums in fourth place, followed by mustelids (stoats, ferrets and weasels), deer, pigs – who have recently moved in from surrounding areas – and rats. Rapidly invading sycamores and willows are another widespread worry, coming in at ninth and tenth spot.
Over the next year and a half the council will gather more data and analyse the costs and benefits of how each pest is managed. This will be poured into a new 10-year regional plan to replace the last one, compiled in 2019.
Heightened concerns about feral cats may result in the most contentious management changes, as this generally spills over into domestic cat territory. It is rabbits and the ever-present threat of more rabbits, however, that is continuing to concern southerners the most.
The most recent estimate available, from 2020, has rabbits costing the country nearly $200m annually in lost production alone, John Walsh, Biosecurity New Zealand director of pest management, says.
For landowners, the only solution, according to the Central Otago farmer who has probably experienced the worst wrath of the rabbit than anyone in the country, is to change your management style.
Alistair Campbell of Earnscleugh Station near Alexandra knows better than anybody that you can’t ever turn your back on a rabbit. He remains wary today, 40 years on, despite a remarkable and enduring turnaround on the 22,000ha property.
In the late 1980s rabbits were so thick on the ground at the farm, if you clapped your hands the whole hillside moved, Campbell says.
“It was hard to sleep at night. All the low country was just bare, there were even sand dunes”.
Coming from the Upper Waitaki – an area that had no shortage of bunnies itself – he and wife Judith purchased Earnscleugh Station in 1981. The pair walked headfirst into a rabbit disaster waiting to happen.
“I came from Te Aka [high country station] and it had a problem that we’d fixed so I thought I could do it here … but no, it wasn’t so easy.”
When the Campbells arrived they focused on developing the farm, fencing up blocks and fertilizing. As the rabbits got worse, the government of the day stepped in and began poisoning with 1080. Product returns at the time were low and bank interest rates high.
“The Rabbit Board control cost on Earnscleugh was $100,000 of which we paid $8000. Under the scrapping of farm subsidies we would have been facing paying the total sum.”
Politicians visited the station, mostly just disappearing back to Wellington in fright. Everything was tried including getting gun clubs and recreational shooters in. Campbell recalls one minister, the late Sir Peter Tapsell, who did make a difference, however, in pushing for proper Crown support.
“I knew he was a keen hunter and we drove up the top of a block. I had a gun in the truck so I gave him that and said I’ll pick you up at the bottom.”
Any idea that hobby shooters were going to be of use was quickly dispelled.
“When I picked him up he said ‘Shit that was fun but I didn’t make a mark on them’.”
There was some rabbit-netted fencing internally but not enough to make a difference. After initial successes, the pest’s numbers began to rapidly bounce back, due to poison drops being done too frequently without proper follow-up shooting.
When two rabbits can become 40 within a year unchecked, the farm was big trouble.
In a report in 1987 to the New Zealand Grassland Association, Campbell documented a move into survival mode.
“Survival over the next few years is the main concern. Like all properties purchased in recent years, we are under considerable pressure with falling land prices and high interest rates. Rabbits remain a problem with between 2000ha to 4000ha out of production at any time.”
Development work was halted and stock numbers had dropped by a third before Campbell decided to step in. He recruited his own skilled hunters including Maurice Williamson and Kevin Boyle, who began a relentless campaign.
“From that minute on the rabbit numbers started going down. I knew how much shot weighed and I worked out that we’d dropped five tonnes of lead on the ground in one year.”
The remarkable recovery of the land and vegetation after many years of non-stop work was a revelation to Campbell. It held the key to keeping rabbit numbers low, and still does today.
“We got down to three shooters and once the rabbits were off, the recovery was amazing. This country is fertile, it just lacks moisture and as soon as it gets rain on it, it just leaps away.”
His son Duncan and wife Amanda are in charge now and the station employs three full-time shepherds and a general worker, as well as having an in-house contractor for tractor work and spraying.
There’s a rabbiter too – Bill Linwood, who’s been there 22 years – but he’s not costing the station very much in ammunition.
“You don’t see rabbits in daylight now. He might get about 20 a fortnight.”
Earnscleugh High Country Genetics is now a renowned fine-wool merino stud and Hereford, Angus and composite cattle stud. Buyers come from far and wide and at the station’s legendary annual bull sale this month one bull sold for a record price of $65,000.
With 25,000 sheep and 1300 cattle there are plenty of mouths to feed in what is the country’s most arid farming region.
Central Otago gets an average of 400mm of rain a year but because of the size and altitude range of Earnscleugh, this varies greatly depending on where you are standing. The homestead sits at about 170m above sea level and the snowy tops of the Old Man Range at 1850m. For every 300m you ascend, there’s an extra 25cm of rain.
Campbell says vegetation cover on the low-altitude rabbit-prone country is constantly kept at a maximum and that keeps the rabbits at bay. Nothing is grazed hard and the thicker the cover the better … rabbits don’t like long grass and it’s as simple as that.
No planting has been done but natives like Olearia, Blue Tussock and Matagouri had come back and were now thriving. Soils are carbon tested, water monitored for quality and riparian areas fenced off along streams. Vegetation monitoring across all land types has now been done at Earnscleugh for 15 years.
“It’s an important thing now for the people who buy our wool. They are extremely interested in land sustainability and animal ethics. All our hill streams are totally clean.”
He says feral pigs had arrived on the farm six years ago and were now having to be trapped.
“We’re having a hell of a battle with them. They came in the northern end and they are across the Fraser River now.”
Deer and goats were also a worry although the latter were manageable using recreational hunters.
“The contractor sowed new grass and he came and looked at it and asked if we’d grazed it already. We hadn’t, so Duncan went up with a spotlight and there were about 70 deer on it.”
It takes about four hours to drive to the station’s boundary, adjoining Glenaray Station in Southland, and back – about a 70km trip. The cost of managing pests on such a vast area is no joke but Campbell says it’s doable, as long as they’re not out-of-control rabbits.
“The others are not going to bankrupt us but the rabbits have got the ability to wipe us out. They’re the least problem at the moment but we still put money into it because we can’t let them get away. If we had to go out and poison again now we’re probably looking at five to 10 years of income to do a poison on this low-altitude country.”
He says most of the hill country stations in Central Otago had done a good job of getting rabbits under control with problems more concentrated now in lifestyle areas and places where landowners had other priorities.
Looking back he says because the government subsidised control work, it encouraged farmers to take a back seat.
“They didn’t really own the problem. When Rabbit Boards got amalgamated no one really felt responsible for their own area. The farmer thought it’s the Rabbit Board’s problem and not theirs.”
Rabbits have always been part of Earnscleugh’s history – with even worse plagues experienced by pioneering owners – and that would continue, Campbell says, but for now he’s revelling in farming healthy pastures and getting good returns.
“The eighties and nineties were pretty gruesome. I never farmed under 11 percent interest rates.”
He recently celebrated his 80th birthday, but has no plans to retire and will continue keeping a wary eye on the place for a while yet.
“I still do dog trials and the dogs need to work. I just do the things I like doing.”
Meanwhile, the Otago Regional Council says the new pest management plan won’t be operational until mid-2028, with ample opportunity before that for the public to have input to any changes.
