Rabbit

Rabbits cause significant damage to conservation, rural and urban lands. Rabbit control helps to manage these impacts.

Rabbits can cause:

• soil erosion
• the spread of weeds
• the degradation of native vegetation
• competition with native plants and animals
• the destruction of habitats for native animals
• damage and disturbance to crops.

Management policy and tools

Managing pests such as rabbits is guided by the ACT Pest Animal Management Strategy [PDF 3.2 MB].

To support control methods, rabbit management is guided by the Best Practice Management Guide for Rabbits [PDF 1.2 MB].

The guide gives more detail on:

• the damage that rabbits cause
• rabbit control methods and associated risk
• key principles of best practice management
• examples of successful rabbit control programs.

Management tools are used to control rabbit populations in line with the National Code of Practice for the humane control of rabbits. This includes:

• exclusion fencing
• shooting
• lethal baiting
• harbour destruction
• diffusion fumigation
• trapping
• rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus.

Determining rabbit populations

Rabbit populations are monitored before they go through a management program. Monitoring aims to:

• understand how many rabbits are in the area
• assess actual or potential damage to the area
• determine where control methods will be applied
• assess the size of rabbit tunnels
• identify potential impacts on non-target species and the environment
• set objectives and targets for the management program.

Populations are calculated through:

• spotlighting counts
• rabbit burrow counts
• active entrance counts
• rabbit burrow mapping.

Acceptable rabbit population numbers are decided based on the types of native plants and animals in an area. This helps to reduce negative effects, such as rabbits eating native seedlings and preventing regeneration.

Rabbit welfare

We follow the national National Code of Practice for the humane control of rabbits (CoP) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for humane rabbit control.

We encourage all land managers to follow these guidelines for rabbit control.

Keeping rabbit numbers low is more humane than letting populations grow. This protects the resources used in the initial control efforts, so efforts don't have to be repeated.

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