A resolution calling on the provincial government to develop a strategy to address the root causes of feral rabbit abandonment in B.C in making the rounds through organizations representing local governments.
The resolution was passed at the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities convention in Nanaimo earlier this month, and it will now make its way to the next Union of B.C. Municipalities convention, and if approved there, it will be sent to the province for consideration.
Many of the rabbits are European domestic ones that were released by their former owners for whatever reasons and they are reproducing, well, like rabbits, and are becoming a problem in communities all over Vancouver Island.
This issue goes back a long time and I remember being astonished at how many bunnies were living in the fields and green spaces at Vancouver Island University’s campus in Nanaimo when I first arrived here many years ago.
There were hundreds of them just wandering around on campus munching on the grass and paying virtually no attention to the people passing by so close to them.
I remember thinking that you would never see this on the campus at Memorial University of Newfoundland where I went to college, at least not when I was student there during the Jurassic Period.
Most of the students at the university at the time were from the thousands of small fishing communities that dot the coastline of the province and, other than the children of the few well-to-do merchants in these towns, the vast majority of young people came from families that hardly ever had two coppers to rub together, so they didn’t have much money to help them get through their student years.
Most survived on meagre student loans and, after paying for rent and books for the semester, there wasn’t much left for food so students would usually buy a 50-pound sack of noodles to try to get them through the next few months of study without starving to death.
But, while lacking in funds, students from the bay communities learned from a young age how to clean fish and skin rabbits, which were and still are considered a delicacy in these areas, and they could do it backwards while blindfolded.
I recall one of my nephew’s young friends from Vancouver Island telling me in an amazed voice once that she had read somewhere that during the Middle Ages, people actually ate rabbits, which I found pretty funny at the time.
Needless to say she was astounded when I informed her that my family’s restaurants in St. John’s were always packed to the rafters with people lined up outside during rabbit season each year.
So I can only imagine what would have happened if students who are educated in outdoor survival arrived at Memorial University and found it covered in rabbits who stand around with no fear of humans, like many areas on Vancouver Island today.
I suspect that they would not have hesitated to take full advantage of the situation.
Mind you, the type of rabbits that live in Newfoundland are wild snowshoe and Arctic hares, which technically aren’t even rabbits, but, with no real rabbits around on the island, that’s what they’re called.
I don’t know if European rabbits that have released and their descendants make for good eating, or if they are all full of parasites or something, but to kids that had grown up living hand-to-mouth for most of their lives with experience on how to prepare them for the supper table, I think most of them would have been only too happy to see if they were edible.
I imagine the rabbit population on campus would have been quickly reduced, if they were safe to eat, as the students would have some meat to add to their noodles.
Sometimes, all it takes are a few hungry kids with hunting and cooking skills to deal with a situation like this, with no need for governments to get involved at all.
What more of a strategy is required?
