Attack Against Rabbits

By Patricia Alaka

Robben Island, South Africa, a dollop of land, just 1 mile wide and 2 miles long, is is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. Now venerated as a World Heritage Site,  it is one of South Africa’s biggest tourist attractions, with 1,200 or so people each day boarding ferries in Cape Town which carry them back into history.

A bus ride is included in the tour, and many people peering out the windows often notice rabbits hopping near the road. “Oh, look, a bunny!” visitors exclaim, and many go on to add, “And there’s another, and another.”  In fact, this island is overrun with rabbits, multiplying at the astonishing rates for which they are renown. They have burrowed beneath the historic buildings and denuded the place of the leafy plants that keep the soil from whooshing into a dust bowl.

For the island’s managers, the rabbits long ago ceased being furry innocents and are viewed instead as maddening varmints. Various efforts have been made to control the population but every idea failed in one way or another. Now a distinctly straightforward approach has begun to succeed: marksmen go out at night and shoot them. There was reluctance to resort to gunplay. With the release of Mr. Mandela in 1990, the island became a symbol for the determined triumph of the human spirit. Somehow the gory slaughter of small, whiskered mammals seemed inappropriate.

“No one is in favor of blood being spilled on Robben Island, but the island has a finite carrying capacity, and with the rabbits burrowing under the foundation of priceless World Heritage Site buildings, we agreed something had to be done,” said Allan Perrins, head of the area’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The nocturnal hunt is not as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, but it is perhaps a close second. Chris Wilke, one of the hired marksmen, says that on a cool, calm night he can bag 25 animals an hour, including the time it takes to dismount from his quad bike and fetch the corpses.

Since mid-October, 5,300 rabbits have been killed, along with 78 unwanted deer and 38 feral cats. Mr. Wilke estimates there are about 8,000 rabbits still to go.

Each night, two hunters traverse the island on their fat-tired bikes, pointing searchlights into the scrub. The rabbits sometimes stop to stare at the beam. The marksmen aim for the head with .22-caliber rifles.

“I can’t say this killing is fun, but I do feel good about it,” Mr. Wilke said one recent night. The plastic storage bin on his vehicle was nearly filled with carcasses. “This work is conservation. These rabbits don’t belong here. They are devastating the island.”

But while South Africa has an overabundance of the destitute, few seem accustomed to the taste of rabbit. For now, the meat remains in a walk-in freezer in the island’s slaughterhouse. The unwelcome rabbits of Robben Island will most likely re-enter the food chain during mealtimes at the nation’s cheetah reserves.