Australia’s Rabbit Disaster Started With Just 24 Animals

In 1859, English settler Thomas Austin (a wealthy pastoralist) released about 24 European rabbits (a mix of wild and domestic Oryctolagus cuniculus) on his Barwon Park estate near Winchelsea, Victoria, for sport hunting. The rabbits arrived on Christmas Day from his family in Somerset, England.

Rabbits had arrived earlier with the First Fleet in 1788 and in small numbers afterward, but these earlier populations did not explode. Genetic studies (2022) confirm that nearly all of Australia’s feral rabbits today descend from Austin’s single introduction, the wild English rabbits had advantageous genetics for rapid spread in the Australian environment.

A herd of rabbits gathers around a watering hole on South Australia’s Wardang Island. Within 50 years of arriving on an English settler’s estate near Melbourne, invasive European rabbits had overrun most of the continent.

Rabbits have high reproductive rates (females can produce multiple litters per year with 4–12 young each). With few natural predators, abundant food (grasses and crops), and suitable burrowing soil, their numbers exploded. By the mid-1860s, thousands were being shot on Austin’s property alone. They spread at up to 100 km per year. By the 1880s, they reached New South Wales and Queensland. By around 1910, they occupied most of southern and central Australia.

The rabbits caused severe ecological and economic damage. They devoured crops, pastures, and seedlings, leading to farm failures, soil erosion, and abandoned properties. They competed with sheep and cattle for food. Overgrazing stripped vegetation, causing erosion, loss of native plants, and habitat degradation. This harmed native wildlife (e.g., by reducing food and shelter for species like bilbies and bandicoots). They altered landscapes on a continental scale and contributed to the decline of native biodiversity.

Plagues were reported in various regions from the 1870s onward, with populations reaching hundreds of millions (estimates later peaked around 600 million before controls). Desperate colonial governments and farmers tried multiple strategies to halt the plague, though most had minimal impact.

By 1866, hunters had slaughtered 50,000 rabbits on Austin’s estate alone, yet the local breeding population outpaced the harvesting. Farmers deployed strychnine across properties to poison food and water sources, accidentally killing native wildlife. Settlers introduced European red foxes and feral cats to hunt the rabbits, but these predators chose to hunt easier native marsupials instead, worsening the biodiversity crisis. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, states built massive barriers, including the famous 1,700km rabbit-proof fence in Western Australia, but rabbits breached them before completion.

Rabbit proof fence in Australia, ca. 1920.

Major success came later with biological controls: the myxomatosis virus in the 1950s (which initially killed ~99% of rabbits) and later the calicivirus (RHDV).

The rabbit invasion remains a classic cautionary tale about invasive species. Australia still manages feral rabbits (numbers are much lower than peak but still problematic), and the event highlights how a small introduction in a naive ecosystem can have catastrophic, long-lasting effects. Thomas Austin is often blamed, though he was just one of many who introduced animals for “acclimatisation.”

Lorry load of rabbits, Braidwood, NSW, early 20th century.

Bert Mann with a load of rabbit skins, Walcha, NSW, ca. 1905.