‘Like a mob of cattle’

A plague of rabbits has destroyed thousands of grapevines, chewed through fence posts and rose gardens and left properties in Central Otago potted with holes, costing landowners thousands of dollars.

The trail of destruction has driven some to take up arms – despite never having owned a gun before – and shoot the rabbits from their front lawns.

The local authority says the responsibility for dealing with the pests lies with homeowners – a stance that has infuriated some, who say the buck should stop with the council, not them.

In recent months the Otago Regional Council (ORC) has visited more than 300 properties across the rabbit-prone areas of Lake Hayes, Morven Hill, Dalefield, Gibbston Valley and Hawea, and it has now emailed hundreds of letters to landowners asking them to come up with their own compliance plan to get rid of rabbits. But some residents see this as unfair.

Stoneridge Estate vineyard and wedding venue owner Wayne Gore has spent more than $5000 on rabbit management this year alone. He said the council hadn’t pulled the trigger on the issue.

‘‘We’ve got about 300 inside the property at the moment, and that’s with us having rabbit-proof fencing and getting in our hunter once every three weeks,’’ he said.

‘‘We [residents of Lake Hayes and its surrounds] had a meeting three years ago with the Otago Regional Council and since then I don’t know that they’ve actually killed one rabbit.

‘‘They sent emails, visited, and they’ve talked about it. My kids who are 10 and 12 have caught more rabbits than they have.’’

Pest management, however, is not covered by rates paid to the regional council after the service was pulled in 2015, along with the ‘‘rabbit board’’ for pest management. Rabbit boards were created in the late 1940s to control rabbits, and they were initially subsidised by the government.

Central Otago’s Easter Bunny Hunt, a traditional rabbit cull, claimed 12,000 rabbits this year. Prior to that, the last one bagged

8069 rabbits in 2017.

The council has urged landowners to take their own measures to reduce the rabbit population, suggesting everything from fencing, poisoning and fumigation to shooting them and even ‘‘hand digging and blocking up burrows’’.

Andrea Howard, the council’s manager of environmental implementation, said if residents did not take one of the suggested measures, they would be brought in under the Biosecurity Act.

Failure to comply after that would lead the council to step in to control the rabbit population on private or public land – at the property owner’s expense.

Several Morven Hill residents told The Press that rabbits had taken over their land, and they could spot at least 100 from their homes every evening. Some had bought firearms to deal with the problem.

‘‘ORC have really dragged the chain over control measures over a very long time . . . The problem over our 30 years in the area has probably amplified at least 10 times,’’ one resident said.

Commercial hunter Sheldon Lye, from Gibbston Valley, has been hunting in the area for more than

30 years and said the rabbit population had increased fivefold in the last decade. ‘‘Populations have exploded. It is just outrageous; it is a soul-destroying exercise. You are putting your plantings out and the bunnies just overrun them.’’

Lye showed The Press more than 7000 dead grapevines on one Gibbston Valley vineyard alone, all within a $10,000 rabbit-proofed fence. Rabbits had eaten fence posts to the core.

Lye doubted the council’s ability to handle the problem alone.

‘‘All ORC are doing is they keep biffing the same old solutions at it. They have good intentions, but they don’t know what they are talking about. They are administrators and have had no experience killing rabbits. It is not one-size-fits-all, and they don’t understand it.’’

The virus that causes rabbit calicivirus disease was illegally introduced into New Zealand in

1997, made legal in 1999 and was successful as a method of treating rabbits for a time. But rabbits developed widespread immunity.

Lye said the solution was a group of hunters and animal experts similar to the rabbit board.

Gore said even with gassing, fencing and shooting the rabbits, he could barely keep on top of the issue. ‘‘There must be rates paid to the council in the tens of thousands, and we aren’t seeing any of that on this issue. We would rather deploy our own rabbit control [and] spend the money on them.’’

Stephen Dickson, who owns Cromwell pest control agency Kill That Rabbit, has been a rabbit hunter for

12 years and said growth had been exponential. The problem had exploded from one that was localised to being much more widespread, he said.

‘‘It’s about your neighbours doing something. It’s not usually private owners – the public landowners are the worst of the lot. Land Information NZ, DOC, the district council – they’re not doing anything. It’s out of control.

‘‘It can be stopped. It is a big job, but it needs organisation. It’d take a year to get the people required with the skill set to do the job.

‘‘It can take two or three years to train these people. Somewhere, somehow, people have to get this thing organised.’’

Stoneridge estate gardener Michael Allen said the rabbits had taken to roses, grapevines and potted holes all over the property.

‘‘If you come around here at eight o’clock at night it is like having a mob of cattle.’’