alt Hacker NewsRabbits 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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pvaldes • today at 8:16 AM
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.
> 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.