(Photo of wild rabbit lying down being injected with live RCD virus titled "Doomed. Agriculture WA officer Brett Vukelic injects the deadly calicivirus disease into one of about 20 rabbits caught near Harvey. Picture John Evans") Note:The rabbit in the picture looks dead, not alive.

RABBIT (Wild European); Passed away peacefully last week after a short illness. Much despised by farmers, conservationists and native animals. Your passing will not be mourned.

As harsh as it sounds, everyone agrees that WA is better off without wild rabbits, which displace native animals degrade natural bush and cause soil erosion.

They cost the commnnity more than $600 million a year in control measures and lost agricultural production.

Today there are fewer rabbits to wreak havoc on the environment after this one was injected with the deadly caliclvirus disease near Harvey last week. It was dead within 40 hours.

But before it died it probably infected its offspring and passed the virus on to fleas, flies and mosquitoes which are carriers of the disease.

The rabbit was one of about 20 caught by Agriculture WA officer Brett Vukelic and student volunteers from the Harvey and Waroona areas as part of a second wave of calicivirus injections designed to overcome immunity to the virus developed by some rabbits.

The calicivirus was officially released in WA at Cranbrook in October last year and was soon followed by releases at 30 other sites from Shark Bay to Esperance in an effort to wipe out wild rabbits.

But the results so far have been patchy· The virus has had a greater impact in the arid and semi-arid areas such as the Nullarbor Plain, Southern Cross and Lake Grace where numbers have declined 65-96 per cent.

But some rabbits in cooler, wetter areas escaped the infection and rabbits younger than 12 weeks had developed immunity, Mr Vukelic said. The immunity could not be passed on.

Unless more than 80 per cent of a rabbit population was destroyed, numbers could return to the original levels the following year.

End

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To: The Editor,
West Australian Newspapers,
Perth
1st December 1997

Dear Editor,

I read with disbelief your item "Few regrets as another rabbit bites the dust" written by Geraldine Capp. Your reporter must be extremely uninformed about the origins and nature of RCD (otherwise known as Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease to the rest of the world) to write an article openly praising the use of the RCD virus as a mechanism for killing rabbits. It is true that parts of Western Australia may be better off with fewer wild European rabbits. However, the use of RCD as a biological control agent of the wild European rabbits carries with it unacceptable risks to human and other non-rabbit species of Australia.

Many international scientists have commented openly on the dangers of using deadly RCD/RHD as a biological control agent. Dr Brian Walker of CSIRO said that no guarantees could be given that RCD/RHD would never infect any other species. Also, RCD/RHD comes from a family of viruses, of which four out of five main groups already infect humans. RCD/RHD first broke out in 1984 in China in a shipment of Angora rabbits flown in from Germany. The origin of this deadly virus is unknown and there are no vaccines to protect any species other than rabbits against RCD/RHD should the virus decide to jump species.

Recently in New Zealand, the New Zealand Ministry of Health and the New Zealand Association of Scientists wrote submissions against the proposed use of RCD/RHD as a biological control agent. The New Zealand government subsequently voted against the use of RCD/RHD as a bio-control of wild European rabbits. Also, with regards to the decimation of wild European rabbit numbers in Western Australia, your reporter seems unaware that no Environmental Impact Statement was ever undertaken to justify making any statements such as “WA is better off without wild European rabbits”. Recently on ABC radio, it was revealed that in some areas where rabbit numbers had declined drastically, dingoes were observed attacking each other for food, foxes were observed catching and eating baby wombats and wedge-tailed eagles hadn’t been seen in 6 months. Smaller birds had disappeared as well. A draft EIS by BJ Coman warned of the possible detrimental effect to 11 different species of birds of prey if rabbit numbers were to decline.

Please remember that RCD escaped from quarantine at Wardang Island and the virus has been uncontrollable and unpredictable since then. There is no such thing as a controlled release of a deadly virus and I urge your reporter to obtain all the facts on this matter before writing any further articles on this issue. I am also very sceptical that your photo was that of a live rabbit being injected with RCD. My opinion is that your photo showed either a very sick or dead rabbit for I have handled many rabbits and could never make a rabbit lie in that position without using 2 hands to restrain the animal.

Kind regards,

Marguerite Wegner

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2nd December 1997

To Mr Howard Sattler,
6PR Radio,
Perth


Dear Mr Sattler,

Yesterday when I went to buy some groceries at the corner store, the shopkeeper seemed quite upset. He pointed out to me that the West Australian had published an article that seemed to promote spreading RCD (rabbit hemorrhagic disease) in Western Australia. It hadn’t been my intention to purchase the paper but I did purchase it after all and I wrote to the West Australian (letter attached). It seems strange that the West would publish such an article that leaves out the facts that authorities are spreading a hemorrhagic disease of mammals for which there is no cure and no vaccines to protect any species other than rabbits! If this disease was to be found to cause illness in humans, there are no vaccines to protect our children. RCD comes from a family of viruses , of which 4 out of 5 main groups are already known to infect humans. RCD first broke out in China in 1984 in a shipment of Angora rabbits flown in from Germany and no-one knows where it came from or what caused it to become a sudden bloody and hemorrhagic killer of rabbits. If RCD did jump species from some other animal in China (which was at the time following intensive farming techniques and feeding food contaminated with the faeces of other animals to the rabbits - possibly including parvovirus which some scientists think has some connection to RCD) then what is to stop RCD jumping species again? No-one can guarantee that RCD won’t jump species and the warnings of several eminent scientists have been deliberately ignored on this issue (some of them are on my website - Rabbit Information Service including comments from Dr David O. Matson, specialist in caliciviruses that infect humans. Dr Matson wrote to our Commonwealth authorities in opposition to using RCD as a biological control agent. His warnings were ignored.) There are others who have written as well, including Dr Alvin Smith who you interviewed some time ago. Is Monty House (State Minister for Agriculture)behind this push to further spread RCD in WA?