A virus is taming Australia’s bunny menace, and giving endangered species new life

[progressoid]

For more than 150 years, Australia has been plagued by rabbits. First introduced by an English settler as hunting fodder in 1859, the European rabbit population soon ballooned to an estimated 10 billion, contributing to extensive environmental damage and the extinction of some native species. Over the past century, biologists tried—and largely failed—to stem the tide with fences, poisons, and pathogens.

Now, an accidental approach seems to be taming the invasion. Since scientists unintentionally released a deadly rabbit virus in 1995, it has wrought havoc on the bunnies—and allowed some endangered native mammals to recover, according to a new study in the journal Conservation Biology.

More...http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/virus-taming-australia-s-bunny-menace-and-giving-endangered-species-new-life?utm_source=sciencemagazine&utm_medium=facebook-text&utm_campaign=bunnymenace-2509

[saturnsring]

1. it was not unintentional

[NickB79]

2. Viral measures were tried in the 1950's, but resistance quickly built up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia#Biological_measures

In 1950, after research was conducted by Frank Fenner, myxoma virus was deliberately released into the rabbit population, causing it to drop from an estimated 600 million[19] to around 100 million. Genetic resistance in the remaining rabbits allowed the population to recover to 200-300 million by 1991.

To combat this trend, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) comprehensively tested, over three years from June 1991, the release of calicivirus to cause rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD).[20] The virus escaped from a quarantine compound on Wardang Island, South Australia, where field tests were being carried out on the potential of the virus for biological control of wild rabbits, and by late October 1995 it was recorded in rabbits at Yunta and Gum Creek, in northeastern South Australia.[21] By the winter of 1996, the virus was established in Victoria, New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The success of the virus was found to be higher in extreme heat, because it appears there is another calicivirus in the colder, wetter areas of Australia, and that this virus was immunising rabbits against the more virulent form.