Otago regional councillor Michael Laws today said that it was “time for central and local government to admit that the introduced Korean virus - released specifically to decimate southern rabbit populations – has failed.”

He says that a report going to the Otago Regional Council regulatory committee this week, claiming “a measured rabbit population decrease of 47%” is “as far from reality, as reality gets.”

“ Ask any Otago rural community, and they will tell you that rabbit numbers
in our region have exploded over the past couple of years.

“ It has been an exercise in frustration getting regional councils, but also
central government agencies, to admit that their much vaunted rabbit control
initiative has been a spectacular failure.”

Cr Laws said the lack of professionalism and intelligent application from those responsible for the release of the RHDV 1 K5 (Korean) virus “has extended to the measurement of the programme’s effectiveness.”

“ It’s taken me months to get the Otago Regional Council, for example, to
provide a tangible measure of the virus’s success. I now find we have only
one measure and that’s rabbit night counts in selected areas.

If these are to be believed – and they shouldn’t be – then the virus has
actually increased rabbit numbers in 6 of the 14 measured areas – almost
half. To claim that the virus has had any impact certainly lacks any
scientific data or rigour.

The truth is – and its admitted elsewhere in the report to Council – that we simply don’t have the staff nor resources to accurately measure the effectiveness, or not, of this virus or any other that we might introduce.”

Cr Laws said that it was time to have a “much more interventionist and active

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