The seaside village of Mōeraki in North Otago paints a pretty picture from a distance but up close, under the buildings, on the hills and along roadsides, things quickly get less attractive.
The place is infested with thousands of rabbits and residents are fighting a losing battle.
“They’re living under houses, they’re living under trailers, water tanks, boats, they’re literally everywhere. It’s ridiculous,” says local resident Ross Kean.
As caretaker for the Mōeraki rūnanga and about a dozen other properties, he is on the front line in maintaining the area, parts of which he now describes as like “a minefield.”
Ross has stopped taking his large four-wheel-drive mower into the worst areas in fear of breaking axles. Here the ground has become so hollow with burrows it swallows him up to the knees as he walks around spraying weeds. On his early morning rounds he often disturbs hundreds of rabbits feeding across the neighbouring hillsides.
“They’re just like maggots as people say, the whole hill moves while you’re looking at it. They’ve just got out of control because there’s been no control on them.”
He continues to shoot a few but reckons the rabbits are smarter than many people think and have got to know his vehicle. The gun-shy creatures disappear at first sight of it coming up the road.
Other locals share his frustration in seeing the place they are proud to call home degrading before their eyes.
Fleur Sullivan has taken to tooting her car horn to clear a path through the rabbits as she drives home each night from her internationally-renowned restaurant Fleur’s Place. She understands the issues but prefers not to crunch the pests under her tyres.
Fleur says she can’t help feeling a misguided fondness for the “sea” of ginger, black and grey creatures she passes every evening.
“There’s a carpet of rabbits at that hour of the night on the road. They’re everywhere. Hundreds of them everywhere. I have to toot the horn, I can’t run over them. You wouldn’t take pride out of driving home and guts, crunch, crunch, crunch all the way.”
She’d be happy to put them in a pie, however the red tape around that makes it unfeasible.
There is one perk to having your pretty village overrun with rabbits – you don’t have to mow your lawn.
“My lawn – where I should have a lawn, it’s just all rabbit poos. Nonstop, just all rabbit poos.”
A spokesperson for the Waitaki District Council referred Newsroom to the Otago Regional Council for comment and advised that discussions had begun on a combined approach to the issue involving property owners and both councils.
Otago Regional Council biosecurity team leader Richard Lord said rabbits in any urban situation were difficult to dealt with. Shooting and poisoning were tricky and with no rabbit-netted fences, absentee owners and a lack of a coordinated plan, individual landowners were going to struggle.
“Unless everyone is pulling together doing the same control operation at the same time, you’re always going to be up against it as an individual.”
Three years ago the council had attempted to instigate a control programme for Moeraki but this had “never got off the ground”. Staff resourcing had been factor and a new plan was yet to be formulated, he says.
“We’ve just dropped the ball on that one to be honest. There’s no denying that but it is amongst several townships or areas we’ve got in the spotlight for work to be done.”
Rabbits’ immunity levels to the 1997 illegally released calicivirus varied in different areas and around Moeraki the local pest population seemed unaffected.
“We’ve got a major rabbit problem in Moeraki and the immunity is very low. The virus should be doing a lot more but we can’t understand the science as to why it’s not having more impact.”
* Made with the support of NZ on Air *
