I am VERY disapointed to have to post this news 
http://www.timescolonist.com/technology/….6001/story.html
“We are in a war zone,” says farmer who ordered ex-UVic bunnies shot
Farmer who ordered killings now besieged by bunnies and people
By JUDITH LAVOIE, Timescolonist.comOctober 1, 2010
The woman who ordered the killing of escaped former University of Victoria bunnies says her farm is under siege by feral rabbits and she is now also coping with furious bunny lovers.
“We are in a war zone. They are very dangerous people. They chased the trapper off my field,” said Barbara Smith, who lives beside a government-approved rabbit sanctuary in Coombs that is taking bunnies removed from the UVic campus.
Smith, a retired lawyer, who has horses on the nine-hectare property, said she had no idea a rabbit sanctuary had moved on to the grounds of the neighbouring World Parrot Refuge until she returned from a trip and found at least 90 feral rabbits on her hay field.
The rabbits are an introduced pest, said Smith, who contacted a trapper, who shot at least 30 animals.
“I am a farmer and these things are inherently dangerous. They are akin to rats. They are not harmless creatures, they are an actionable nuisance,” said Smith, who is incensed that the environment ministry would allow feral rabbits in an agricultural area.
“They have dumped UVic’s problem on us, created an environmental disaster zone and walked away,” she said.
Smith contacted Wendy Huntbatch at the World Parrot Refuge Tuesday afternoon, but the trapper started shooting about two hours later, before rabbit-rescuer Susan Vickery had a chance to catch the escapees.
Smith said the rabbits had been out since the weekend, so there had been plenty of time to catch them.
“She’s responsible for containing those rabbits,” she said.
All the rabbits killed had been tattooed and sterilized after moving from the UVic campus. The death toll included some of Vickery’s pets.
Last night, Smith said she could see about two dozen rabbits in her field and another four dozen in a neighbouring field, but she has no intention of allowing Vickery on her property to catch them.
“I will deal with the rabbits on my land in whatever way I have to,” she said.
That has Vickery in a quandary as she fears the survivors will meet the same fate as the dead ones. She also worries that injured rabbits could be lying in the field.
“This was just so unnecessary. This was just someone being angry,” she said.
Vickery said it is possible some rabbits escaped a couple of days earlier, but she does not believe 90 hopped away.
“Anyway, why didn’t they contact me?” she asked.
“I find their behaviour completely unacceptable.”
RCMP and ministry officials have been on site. But the official say that as the feral rabbits are wildlife, they can be legally captured and killed, provided a firearm is not used in the vicinity of a home and animals are killed humanely.
Penny Stone, B.C. SPCA Victoria branch manager, said shooting rabbits is considered humane, but she is saddened the property owners did not give sufficient time for the rabbits to be recaptured.
“I would have hoped people would have had a little more patience, especially knowing what these rabbits have already been through,” she said.
Meanwhile, Smith said she is receiving threats from people angry about the rabbit killings.
“It is just a horror show,” she said.
Huntbatch said she delivered a bale of hay to the gate outside Smith’s home Thursday morning.
“I put a note on it saying ‘we paid for this with our lives’ and I signed it from the murdered bunnies,” she said.
UVic is trying to clear the campus of about 1,400 of the estimated 2,000 abandoned former pets and their offspring.
About 400 rabbits have been captured so far and are heading for sanctuaries as far away as Texas.
The sterilization/relocation program followed an outcry from rabbit enthusiasts when the university was considering culling the bunnies.
jlavoie@timescolonist.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Dg7dfhZTA
Victoria residents wage war of the rabbits
By Ethan Baron, The Province October 3, 2010 Comments (6)
StoryPhotos ( 1 )
Province columnist Ethan Baron
Photograph by: File photo, The ProvinceThere’s nothing funny about dead bunnies. It’s the rabbit lovers and the haters that bring a smile to my face.
Out in Coombs, the bucolic Vancouver Island community best known for goats on the roof at the Coombs Country Market, the introduction of hundreds of rescued bunnies has produced a human comedy of world-class proportions.
On one side, a horde of rabid animal lovers who orchestrated the salvation of death-sentenced rabbits from the University of Victoria, only to see their efforts end in a bloody bunny massacre.
On the other side, a once-famous musician and his retired-lawyer wife, who say fallout from the measures they took against the long-eared invaders at their hobby farm has turned their pastoral paradise into a “war zone.”
This saga began years ago, birthed of human irresponsibility as Victoria residents abandoned pet rabbits whose neediness outlasted their cuteness.
As bunnies will do, these hapless
once-pets bred, and eventually the University of Victoria campus became home to some 2,000 feral rabbits. Moves to kill them generated outrage among animal lovers, who responded with court action to stop the cull, raised $90,000 for rabbit rescue and arranged with the B.C. Environment Ministry and U.S. border authorities to allow shipment of 1,000 rabbits to a Texas farm.
Meanwhile, Saltspring Island wildlife advocate Susan Vickery had a bunny sanctuary built at the World Parrot Refuge near Coombs, unfortunately right next door to the property of retired lawyer Barbara Smith and her husband Rick Coonce, former drummer for The Grassroots, an American rock band from the ’60s and ’70s.
Of the several hundred rabbits put into Vickery’s care, a disputed number escaped. Smith, who keeps horses, told the Victoria Times-Colonist’s Judith Lavoie that she came home from a trip last week to find about 90 bunnies hopping about in her hay field. On Wednesday, Smith contacted Wendy Huntbach at the World Parrot Refuge to complain, but soon demonstrated that whatever lawyerly virtues she may possess, patience is not among them. Two hours after she called, her hired gunslinger opened fire, offing about 30 rabbits before Vickery arrived with some traps.
Bunny lovers were, predictably, hopping mad, and Huntbach struck a blow on behalf of the fuzzy martyrs: She delivered a hay bale to Smith and Coonce, with a note saying, “We paid for this with our lives,” signed “from the murdered bunnies.”
Honestly, I’m not making this up. Smith says animal lovers chased her hired gun off the property, and have threatened her. “We are in a war zone,” she hyperbolized to Lavoie. Indeed, one of the reader comments on the Times-Colonist website suggests that if “they think it’s OK to kill pets, then let’s play the same game and kill some of them.”
By late last week, Smith was eyeing the remaining rabbits in her hayfield, refusing Vickery’s entreaties to let her trap them, and promising to “deal with the rabbits on my land in whatever way I have to.”
Clearly, cooler heads will not prevail. The players in this amazing made-in-B.C. drama have left reason far behind. I’ll stroke my lucky rabbit’s foot (sorry, Susan and Wendy) and hope the bunnies remain the only victims. There’s nothing funny about dead people.
ebaron@theprovince.com
