You realise that rabbits were once so rare in Australia they had to be introduced to salve the British passion for killing small things?

The article claims:

  The European rabbit is a common sight in the British countryside today.
  Yet it was not always so. They are not native to the British Isles and are one of the most devastating invasive species.

If true, there was a time when they were so rare as to be non existent.

From that time, until at most 1555 when:

  ... the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner could write that "there are few countries wherein coneys (rabbits) do not breed, but the most plenty of all is in England."

there was an interstitial period of decreasing rarity.

▲ kijin 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Rabbits also happen to be an excellent source of protein for other animals. This helps keep the rabbit population under control in healthy ecosystems.

Unlike Australia, Britain had wolves and foxes for a long time. Not to mention the apex predator, Homo sapiens, who in late medieval and early modern Britain were probably much more eager to hunt and eat rabbits than modern Australians are.

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defrost 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> modern Britain were probably much more eager to hunt and eat rabbits than modern Australians are.

Modern as in today or modern as in, say 1940s?

I can state as a fact that here in Australia my father, born 1935 and still alive and within 20 feet as I type, kept his mother and younger siblings alive by snaring, trapping, and shooting rabbits through the WWII years his father was overseas in North Africa and Europe.

Further, the bulk of the non native population in Australia until recently was essentially composed of "modern Britains" who were so eager to hunt rabbits they're insisted on bringing their cursed invasives here.

The root of the issue here was more the sparse numbers of people hunting rabbits and the vastness of the space sans people the rabbits had for expansion.

Not even the dingos and European introduced foxes in Australia had sufficient numbers to make a dent.

Although it has spawned a lot of papers on cat, fox, dingo, rabbit, bilby, quokka population dynamics and predator - prey cycles.

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phillc73 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Did you eat them as a kid too? Growing up in rural Australia, I regularly ate rabbit in the late 70s and early 80s. It's been a while since I've had one though.

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defrost 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Pretty much - along with fresh and salt water fish, food from the garden, kangaroo, lamb, mutton, sometimes beef, etc - the usual staples ;-)

	▲	phillc73 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I remember wild mushrooms, yabbies, eels as well. Prawning with my grandfather in a saltwater lagoon using hand nets and a hurricane lantern.

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kijin 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"late medieval and early modern" = some time between the Plague and the industrial revolution.

"modern" = after the industrial revolution, which implies broad availability of farmed meat, leading to a gradual decline of hunting.

Yes, predation is a major factor in rabbit population control. And I'm counting British people as formidable rabbit killers, so I think we're in agreement there.

	▲	defrost 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We're more or less in agreement, sure - I'm certain that Australians and Britains were equally eager to eat rabbits (during those times when that was a thing), the substantive difference being very few people in a vast land (AU) versus a mass of people in a pocket square of an island group (UK).

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pvaldes 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Scotland at least needs the return to the native European Lynx since long time ago. Sheep are what prevents it, but it could help to put some order in the populations of rabbits, vampire deer, roe deer and red foxes.