Rabbits did not invade Australia.
Humans took them there.
Almost 170 years after British settlers deliberately introduced rabbits, their descendants are being poisoned, shot, fumigated and deliberately infected with viruses because humans have decided they are the problem. There is something fundamentally backwards about this. The European rabbit was brought to Australia during British colonisation. While rabbits arrived as early as 1788, researchers have traced their continent-wide spread to just 24 rabbits imported by settler Thomas Austin in 1859. By the 1920s, their population was estimated in the billions. Today, estimates suggest around 200 million rabbits live across Australia, although nobody actually knows because there is no formal national count. Humans trafficked rabbits thousands of miles from where they belonged. Humans released them. Rabbits reproduced. And now rabbits are called the invaders.
The damage is real. The blame is misplaced.
None of this means pretending there is no ecological problem. Rabbits eat young native vegetation, compete with other animals for food and habitat, and can support larger populations of introduced cats and foxes. One study cited by the Guardian found rabbits negatively affected 329 threatened Australian species, more than any other invasive animal. Under favourable conditions, rabbit populations can increase tenfold in a season. Their impact on Australian agriculture has also been estimated at around A$200 million annually. But a rabbit born in Australia did not choose where her ancestors were taken. She did not design colonial trade routes. She did not decide that another continent would make an great home. She was simply born. Humans created the problem and then constructed a category that makes killing the victims of our mistake sound like environmental management.
And the killing can be brutal
Australia has repeatedly turned to biological weapons against rabbits.
Myxoma virus was introduced in the 1950s. Different versions of rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus followed from the 1990s. An accidental release of calicivirus in 1995 caused rabbit populations in some arid areas to collapse by as much as 95%. As rabbits develop resistance, Australia is now developing further virus variants. Other methods include poisoning, fumigating warrens, destroying warrens and shooting rabbits.
A 2026 peer-reviewed study examining public attitudes towards killing introduced animals in New Zealand explicitly acknowledges that these programmes can involve methods causing pain and suffering. Researchers asked 4,058 people to choose between hypothetical lethal methods targeting possums, rats and mustelids, varying the severity of suffering, environmental contamination, deaths of other animals and financial cost. When killing was presented as continuous population suppression, severe pain became respondents’ greatest concern. And when participants were given the opportunity to reject both lethal options entirely, between 4% and 25% did exactly that, depending on the question. The researchers deliberately included that option because people opposed to killing introduced animals could otherwise be forced to choose between two actions they considered unacceptable.
There is another choice hidden beneath debates about how we should kill animals. Whether killing them should automatically be our answer at all.
“Invasive” describes history, not guilt
Conservation discussions frequently divide animals into categories such as native and invasive and then treat those labels as though they confer different moral value. But an individual rabbit has no concept of national borders, ecological classifications or colonial history. Humans moved her ancestors. The same ethical problem appears whenever humans transport animals somewhere, allow populations to establish themselves, alter ecosystems around them, and eventually declare their descendants unwanted. Even the New Zealand study begins from a revealing premise: conservation can involve harming or killing some animals for the supposed benefit of other animals and ecosystems. But once killing becomes the starting assumption, the discussion quickly becomes one of trade-offs. Which poison? How much suffering? How many unintended deaths? How much will it cost? The individual condemned to die disappears behind population statistics.
Australia undoubtedly has an ecological problem involving rabbits. But rabbits did not create it. Humans introduced the animal. Humans changed the ecosystem. Humans created the conflict. Perhaps the question should stop being why rabbits are such a problem. And start being why, whenever humans create an ecological disaster, another animal so often ends up paying for it.