Within 50 years rabbits had spread across almost the entire continent, with devastating implications for Australia’s indigenous flora and fauna. Rabbits were brought to the island in the late 1800s to provide food for shipwrecked sailors. With most of the rabbits gone, the estimated 500 feral cats on Macquarie Island knew what to do.
Regionally part of Oceania and politically a part of Tasmania, Australia, since 1900, it became a Tasmanian State Reserve in 1978 and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1997. Macquarie Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, lies in the Southwestern Pacific Ocean, about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. “Cats were introduced to Macquarie Island in about 1820 and rabbits about 60 years later in 1878. By the 1980s their numbers had exploded. The island is home to the entire royal A dramatic increase in their populations Rabbits around a waterhole during myxomatosis trials, Wardang Island, South Australia, 1938 In 1859 European wild rabbits were introduced into Australia so they could be hunted for sport. Seal hunters introduced rabbits to Macquarie in 1878, compounding the invasive species problem on the 21-mile-long island. The impact of introduced predators on wildlife and the vegetation degradation caused by rabbits was severe. Following the eradication of feral cats in 2000, rabbits and rodents became the dominant pest species on the island. In the case of Macquarie Island, sealers deliberately introduced cats and rabbits over 180 years ago and unintentionally introduced rats and mice. European rabbits were introduced to Macquarie Island in the 1870s, while ship rats and house mice were first recorded on the island in the 1890s.

Rabbits came to Macquarie Island with sealers in the early 1800s as a source of food. In the 1900s the rabbit population exploded, and in 1968 the myxomatosis virus was released. Many species were threatened by invasive cats, rabbits, rats and mice. The bad news is that the remaining rabbits were the ones that were immune to the disease. By 1960, grazing by rabbits was having very destructive effects on the native vegetation,” said Dr Bergstrom. It was a part of Esperance Municipality until 1993, when the municipality was merged with other municipalities to form Huon Valley Council.


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