Wildlife refuge no more for pests

Helicopters have worked through sub-Antarctic winter weather to twice saturate the 13,000-hectare wildlife refuge with poison baits targeted at rabbits, rats and mice. Now dogs are mopping up remnants.

The $25 million federal-state project had to overcome setbacks including abandonment of its first round of bait-laying flights last winter, and the unintended poisoning of hundreds of seabirds. Now rewards are flowing as grasses and other flora sprout through the cold.

Read more here.

Croydon woman fined over sick rabbit

A CROYDON woman who failed to take her sick rabbit to a vet has been fined and barred from owning another pet for two years.

Liwen Hang failed to appear in Burwood Local Court when the matter was dealt with last Tuesday, but was convicted and fined in her absence, after an RSPCA inspector gave evidence that the sick female rabbit was found in a dirty cage last year.

The inspector immediately took it to a vet.

The rabbit’s body was described as being thin and it was given treatment for a suspected pasteurella infection.

After a two-week course of treatment the rabbit’s symptoms improved and her body weight increased 29 per cent.

Following a court hearing, Ms Hang was convicted and fined $800.

ANIMAL CRUELTY
* Liwen Hang, of Croydon, was fined last week after failing to provide her rabbit with veterinary treatment
* She received an $800 fine, and was ordered to pay $79 court costs, more than $71 transcription costs and more than $500 vet and boarding costs
* Ms Hang is now prohibited from owning an animal for the next two 

Found on the Inner West Courier website.

Freedom For Farmed Rabbits

In Australia thousands of rabbits are factory farmed, kept in dirty windowless sheds, similar to battery hens. The sheds confine rabbits to small overcrowded metal cages. They are kept in these cages until they are killed at around 1.5kg (usually10-12 weeks of age). Their bodies are sold to restaurants, butchers and select supermarkets. Although it is not known exactly how many producers are in business at one time, as of 2007 there are 43 rabbit farms Australia-wide (except in Queensland). The average farm imprisons 300 breeding does per farm. With the growing popularity of rabbit meat, the amount of farms and rabbits killed is set to rise. Global rabbit meat consumption in 2004 was 1.1 million tonnes. Approximately half this amount comes from farms. Raising rabbits for meat is frequently promoted as an easy and lucrative money-maker, and often attracts people to the industry with little or no experience. There is very little government inspection on rabbit farms: these places can go unlicensed and unregulated for years.


go to website.

Peter Rabbit on the hunt

VETERAN rabbit shooter Peter Golden says the lure of the bunny gets in your blood and just won't go away, writes SARAH HUDSON

They call him Peter Rabbit.

And not because he bears any resemblance to the children's book character.

While his parents may have christened him Peter Golden, to the folk around central Victoria he's simply Peter Rabbit.

What else do you call one of the state's oldest continual rabbit shooters, one who targets wild rabbits that are on-sold to markets and high-end restaurants?

"They think I come out of a Noddy book or something," Peter says.

"Bob Hart (Herald Sun food critic) came up to the Redesdale Hotel and had rabbit pie. He wrote that the local game supplier was Peter Rabbit.

"It's just stuck. Everyone knows me as that now."

Given he's been in the trade for 35 years, Peter's pedigree is a substantial one, having seen major changes in the industry, not least the demand for the product itself.

"Rabbits aren't a poor-man's tucker any more. Restaurants are lapping them up and I'd have no trouble selling more," he says.

Read full story here.

Kids' rabbit-fur fashion branded harebrained

A FASHION house has provoked controversy by dressing children as young as five in furs for this year's winter collection.

Bonpoint, the luxury French children's label, in its catalogue dresses little girls in rabbit-fur coats and adorns them with fur purses and brooches made from rabbit skin.

Animal rights campaigners have accused the couture house, which entertained US first lady Michelle Obama and her two daughters at its Paris headquarters during Barack Obama's first visit to France as President in 2009, of courting controversy to get publicity.

Bonpoint is offering a baby's rabbit-fur gilet for $184, while a rabbit-fur coat for a six-year-old will cost $333.

Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals claims 70 million rabbits are killed for fur in France each year.

"This is a provocative way of getting attention," said Mimi Bekhechi, manager of Peta Europe. "The rabbit fur is not a by-product of the meat trade. These animals are bred for their fur and kept crammed together in tiny cages."

RELATED COVERAGE

• Fur flies in SeoulThe Australian, 16 May 2011
• Test shows 'dog' vest is rabbitHerald Sun, 13 May 2011
• Stores 'stock clothes made from dog'Perth Now, 12 May 2011
• Buying child's love with $900 jacketHerald Sun, 18 Mar 2011
• Fur protesters join the in-crowdThe Australian, 10 Mar 2011

The group has posted a video on YouTube taken inside a fur farm in which live rabbits are shown strung up by their legs on conveyor belts on their way to be skinned.

Andrew Tyler, director of Britain's Animal Aid, said: "It's a pretty perverted marketing strategy to induce young children to drape themselves in the product of extreme cruelty but we expect nothing better from fur advocates."

Bonpoint was unavailable for comment. The label is favoured by Suri Cruise, daughter of Hollywood couple Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, who at five has been ranked No 21 in a magazine poll to find the most stylish women in the world.

from The Sunday Times

Rabbit resistance plagues Coorong

THERE appears to be a gradual resurgence in rabbit populations in the Coorong area, according to Biosecurity SA's natural resource management-biosecurity senior research officer Greg Mutze.

In many sites where rabbit numbers had been low for 10 years there was substantial recovery during the past five years. The trend was widely reported in arid and semi-arid Australia.

Evidence from studies on wild rabbits collected from 10 sites stretching from South Australia to Queensland indicated that rabbits at many places had developed some level of genetic resistance to rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus.

Current research seeks to determine whether the virus itself has weakened or if it is co-evolving with rabbits to maintain virulence.

from here.