Rabbit Control

Overview

Shoalhaven City Council is responsible for the management of rabbit issues on Council-managed land only.

The state agency with control of wild rabbit problems is the Local Land Services (LLS).

What Council does

Council has an ongoing program of rabbit control activities across our:

  • Parks
  • Natural areas
  • Operational lands (tourist parks etc.)

We do this to reduce the risk of injury to park, reserve and natural area users from disturbed and uneven ground, and to protect our planting and landscaping programs.

Council does not have general responsibility for rabbit control in the city. Under state legislation, all landowners with rabbits on their property are responsible for their control.

Get more details:

What you can do

Report rabbit activity

You can report feral pest activity through the Feral Scan website.

FeralScan is hosted by the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) and supports regional Natural Resource Management (NRM) groups, local Councils, and landholders.

Visit:

  • Feral Scan
    • Download the Mobile App from App Store for iPhone or Google Play Store for Android
    • Report the exact location and time of the sighting on the map

Your report about rabbit activity is helpful as all reports are valuable in helping staff develop, implement and monitor our rabbit control program Council managed land.

Council makes no commitment to follow up individual reports.

Report a problem

You can also report rabbit infestation issues to Council:

The one-way rabbit box!

One of our Council volunteers, Kevin McHugh, was helping with rabbit control when he devised a one-way rabbit box system for removing rabbits from the underfloor area of buildings. The rabbits were under the sub floor area of the Catholic Church at Sussex Inlet - even though the sub floor area was all bricked up the rabbits were getting in through the ventilators. Many properties share this problem, and people don't want to fully enclose the sub-floor area and leave the rabbits to a slow death under the house.

Rabbit-trap.jpg

Kevin devised his one-way rabbit box, like a one-way pet door, and built it from scrap materials. He put wire over all but one of the entrances, and used the box to allow rabbits out but not in. You can see how it works from the photos.

This doesn't catch or dispose of the bunnies - removing hiding places for rabbits is the most effective thing people can do to reduce rabbit numbers in their area. Who knows, perhaps some bright spark will develop a holding pen for the bunnies that come out.