well, to help stop the multiplying you could try trapping, and spaying or neutering them, neutering would the cheaper option. Then the boys wouldn’t be able to do their thing. You’d still have the issue of people dumping the bunnies, but all you can really do about that is put the word out that dumping the bunnies isn’t letting them be free, its letting them be food. Not sure what else to do really Maybe try contacting different bunny vets, and see if they would donate time to neuter the poor things so it doesn’t get too out of control?

Fantastic idea about the neutering, Im a little worried about the costs of this procedure though. The rabbits live underground i burrows throughout the property, and there are an estimated 100 of them. We would have to be sure that we had caught every male rabbit in order for the neuter to be effective…. Plus it would be one heck of a fundraising effort, and we cant release them back there because the site they are on wants them gone by any means. ….

Well, what I can think of with my coffee deprived brain right now is that if you CAN catch them all, you could maybe call up all those SPCA’s and the rescue and see if you can come up with a rabbit adoption event. Spread the word via the vets, website, flyers, whatever. See if you can’t get the poor things adopted out if possible. Which may not be, if they are that feral. Hmms. I will think more on it.

Mmmmmm coffee…..

That is a really good idea!!! Jersey maybe you and I can go to the caravan park one day next week and perhaps just suss out the situation, Population, and habitation?

Maybe one of the local vets would help out by neutering some of the herd at reduced costs? You could also try raising money by placing cans at pet/feed stores and local businesses (with permission of course) to assist with spay/neuters. Possibly put an ad looking for experienced foster homes in the area? This is the two main ways a local group in my city helps the local feral cat colonies.

They have capture programs here for feral cats where they are caught in traps, neutered/spayed, and released. They do this for the really wild feral cats because they tend to not make very good pets for people to adopt. Younger animals, however, are often fostered and then put up for adoption since they have a better chance of becoming a loving pet. I don’t know how it works for rabbits, since they are prey animals rather than predators. It may be better for the animal psychologically if they are allowed to live out their lives in the wild after being fixed, but perhaps not. Do “wild” bunnies tend to calm down after being fostered? I don’t know. If that is the case though, I would suggest trapping them and keeping them out of the wild. But I guess that is what others have already suggested, so I’m probably no help.

Just a quick note, a group in my area neutered some feral rabbits and returned them back to the same area, the problem was they did them in groups, then released back with the ones who were still in tack, the sputered bunnies were attacked and even killed by the non-sputered ones
It was real bad press for the group trying to help with the situation.

So far re-locating after spaying and neutering has been working, but most are not going to homes, but sanctuaries.

Maybe Kafrn can start a sanctuary on her farm

reading this last week made me think of a situation we have in my home town…Duluth, MN. Near Duluth is an area called Park Point. Park Point is, essentially, an island near the point of Lake Superior. It’s only connection to the “main land” is through bridges. Years and years ago people started releasing their domesticated rabbits, with no way off the island these rabbits quickly multiplied in this confined area. Here is a little video I found to share…

I’m not wishing to upset you, but I was reading something today about biological control and I thought of this thread. It is in a textbook for my class. It reads:

Biological control… has a poor record against pest control. One of the few successes is the use of Myxoma against rabbits. It holds the density of rabbits in Australia to about 20% of their uncontrolled density despite the decline in virulence of the virus and of susceptibility of the rabbit, both a product of massive natural selection.

So Myxoma is used as a biological control agent? I had no idea, I was shocked when I read this.

Then under control by manipulating fertility, it reads:

Two rabbit populations in Australia were artificially sterilized to varying degrees. The reduced recruitment of newborn was compensated by a density-dependent survival of the remaining juveniles. Female sterility had to reach 80% before a decline in population was observed.

Basically this means that reducing the number being born leads to an increase in survival rate of those that are born. So sterilizing doesn’t do much good in reducing the population size unless a vast majority of the females are sterilized.

There is also a segment later on about genetic engineering. It reads:

Tyndale-Biscoe suggested using a pathogen of low virulence to vector a foreign gene that would disrupt reproduction. He suggested particularly that the Myxoma virus could be used to carry an inserted gene that would reduce the birth rate of the European rabbit in Australia.

I have heard of using viruses as a cloning vector in bacteria, but never in mammals. Is that even possible? At any rate, I found this all very interesting especially since you were talking about it on here. I guess rabbits must be a pretty big concern in Australia if it was mentioned so many times in my book.

Jersey – To answer your questions…

I’d be interested to know if that first of your quotes from your textbook holds true today. That myxo is still regarded as an effective control?
I’m not sure, the book doesn’t elaborate on this too much. The book was published in 2006, so it is fairly new. Basically it is saying that the rabbits have become mostly immune to the virus and the virus has become less virulent, both due to the natural selection process. So that part is consistent with what you said. So yes, it does seem to be contradicting itself unless it means that it had been successful in the past.

So this sterilization is done through a virus that makes the rabbit Doe become infertile?
Not necessarily by a virus. I think in this case the rabbits were being captured and spayed.

This is meaning a myxoma strain that is not fatal I assume? Just causes some sterility amoung the rabbit population?
I was half asleep last night. At first I was thinking vector cloning, but this is more like gene therapy. Basically, the virus is deactived so they don’t cause harm to the animal and it is used as a vector to transport a gene to the cells of the animal. My guess is that it probably has something to do with hormone production, which would cause sterility from lack of ovulation. I’m just guessing at that, but it makes sense. The trick though it that it would have to be in vivo, meaning the animal is injected and that’s it… the virus takes care of the rest.

You’re welcome. I know, the textbook is so confusing. I get lost reading it sometimes.

I’ve been looking to see if an article/journal is available for the study by Tyndale-Biscoe, but I’m not having any luck yet.

I’ve got the title of the article: Virus-vectored immunocontraception of feral mammals, published in 1994 in Reproduction, Fertility, and Development. The article isn’t available for free anywhere, even through the university’s library. I did, however, find an article talking about cats that refers to the article by Tyndale-Biscoe. Here’s the link:

http://www.ese.u-psud.fr/epc/conservation/PDFs/VVIC.pdf

It says:

As an alternative, immunocontra-
ception is based on reducing birth rates (Alexander
& Bialy 1994; Tyndale-Biscoe 1994). Immunocontra-
ception is a process by which the immune system of
an individual is made to attack its own reproductive
cells and hence lead to sterility. This is achieved by
infecting individuals using a gamete protein that
triggers an immune response; the resulting antibo-
dies bind to these proteins and block fertilization
(Bradley, Hinds & Bird 1997). Infection occurs by
injection (e.g. for large mammals; Kirkpatrick et al.
1997), bait (e.g. for small carnivores; Bradley, Hinds
& Bird 1997) or living vectors (e.g. for small herbi-
vores; Tyndale-Biscoe 1994; Cowan 1996; Rodger
1997; Smith, Walmsley & Polkinghorne 1997).
Virus-vectored immunocontraception (VVIC), for
example, utilizes a species-speci®c virus to dissemi-
nate this vaccine through a pest population by pla-
cing the gene encoding the reproductive protein into
the genome of the virus (Tyndale-Biscoe 1994). This
potentially powerful new technique has generated a
signi®cant impetus of research e€ort into feasibility.

Sorry if that didn’t copy well. Interesting stuff though!

Okay, I edited that last post.

No biggie.
Yes, generally a live vector is a virus. It would have to be injected somehow and the genes are transferred to the animal’s cells by the virus itself. In vivo simply means that the genes are being transferred to the cells while the cells are inside the animal’s body. This is opposed to ex vivo, where cells are removed from the body, the genes are delivered to the cells, and then the cells are transplanted back into the body. Obviously, if the genes could simply be delivered by the virus it would vastly simplify things. That was all that I meant before, that that is really amazing and apparently this person was able to do it (or maybe not, who knows without reading the article exactly how they did it, haha!).
You bring up some good questions about side effects. I wonder if such things have even been looked at as far as a study goes. I don’t know how long the study conducted by this person was, so it is hard to say if there was even the potential for observation of such effects. It would be interesting to read the article if I can find it somewhere to view for free.

Just caught up on this thread, that’s an interesting method of population control, hm. Might a more “humane” way to do things (well, don’t know the side effects) but at the same time it also sounds like a fast-track selective pressure that will breed resistance pretty quickly? I tried to look up the article you mentioned on my university’s databases…while I’ve had no luck yet, I’ve found a slew of related articles, some rabbit-specific, on PubMed:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=link&linkname=pubmed_pubmed&uid=7831481

[edit] Argh, most of the really promising looking articles are in the journal “Reproduction, Fertility, and Development,” which I apparently don’t have immediate access to.  The librarians claim that with some notice, they can procure most articles for students to peruse..maybe I’ll put in a request.  So that’s where my tuition goes, hmm.  I did however have access to download the full text of a review titled “Biological control of vertebrate pests using virally vectored immunocontraception” that actually cites the Tyndale-Biscoe paper and has a bit of specific discussion on the use of the myxoma virus in rabbits; if anyone is interested shoot me a PM and I can email it to you