In the early days of the settlement of Australia, enterprising settlers
unwisely introduced the European rabbit. This rabbit had no natural
enemies in the Antipodes, so that it multiplied with that promiscuous
abandon characteristic of rabbits. It overran a whole continent. It
caused devastation by burrowing and by devouring the herbage which
might have maintained millions of sheep and cattle. Scientists
discovered that this particular variety of rabbit and apparently
no other animal was susceptible to a fatal virus disease, myxomatosis.
By infecting animals and letting them loose in the burrows, local
epidemics of this disease could be created. Later it was found
that there was a type of mosquito which acted as the carrier of
this disease and passed it on to the rabbits. So while the rest
of the world was trying to get rid of mosquitoes, Australia was
encouraging this one. It effectively spread the disease all over
the continent and drastically reduced the rabbit population.
It later became apparent that rabbits were developing a degree
of resistance to this disease, so that the rabbit population
was unlikely to be completely exterminated. There were hopes,
however, that the problem of the rabbit would become manageable.
Ironically, Europe, which had bequeathed the rabbit as a pest
to Australia, acquired this man-made disease as a pestilence.
A French physician decided to get rid of the wild rabbits on
his own estate and introduced myxomatosis. It did not, however,
remain within the confines of his estate. It spread through
France, where wild rabbits are not generally regarded as a
pest but as a sport and a useful food supply, and it spread
to Britain where wild rabbits are regarded as a pest but
where domesticated rabbits, equally susceptible to the disease,
are the basis of a profitable fur industry. The question became
one of whether Man could control the disease he had invented.