The Natural History of Wales (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 66) by William. M. Condry

Author:William. M. Condry [William Condry M.A., M.Sc. ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007406548
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

FARMLAND MAMMALS

Farming man has long been at war with wild mammals, four of them especially: rabbit and brown rat which are aliens; and mole and fox which are natives. It was the Norman conquerors who brought the first rabbits to Wales – as a food supply in an age when other meat was scarce. They installed them in sand dunes or on islands; and inland they built piles of earth for them to burrow in and a few of these mounds have survived into our time. They were long a puzzle to antiquarians who called them ‘pillow mounds’ and maps still show them so named. Another old Welsh map name, cwnigaer, indicates the sites of early warrens. The present-day Welsh for rabbit, cwningen, has clear affinities with ‘coney’, as the rabbit was first called in English.

At first the rabbits were carefully controlled. But as the power of the manorial lords (the chief warren owners) diminished and food supplies generally improved, making rabbit meat less in demand, the warrens fell into disuse, their occupants dispersing over the farming country which, because crop production was always increasing, had by now become a land fit for rabbits to thrive in. But not till the eighteenth century did they become a serious pest because it was then that gamekeeping began to wipe out the predators – wild cats, martens, polecats, stoats, weasels, buzzards and kites – which hitherto had helped to control rabbit numbers. Also in the eighteenth century farmers started to grow winter fodder for their animals and these new crops – turnips for instance – the hungry rabbits gratefully devoured.

By 1900 rabbit numbers were enormous and the damage they inflicted was phenomenal. Over the next half century in the worst districts such as south Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire many holdings virtually became rabbit farms. The rabbits were killed by itinerant gangs operating thousands of gin traps as they worked from farm to farm, always making sure they left plenty of rabbits alive to breed the next plague very soon. In the lanes of west Wales lorries piled high with traps were as familiar a sight as milk lorries. All the year round the nights were hideous with the squeals of rabbits in agony.

A campaign against the gin trap was mounted, its sponsors pointing out that not only rabbits but stoats, foxes, badgers and polecats were getting killed in the traps. Birds too were suffering—buzzards, choughs, ravens and even oystercatchers. One-legged herring gulls were everywhere But by the time the gin trap was made illegal in 1958 the rabbit industry had already been ended – by myxomatosis. This virulent disease reached Wales (Radnorshire) in spring 1954. By autumn it was raging widely and by spring 1955 the rabbit was rare almost everywhere. Myxomatosis had achieved a 99% kill. No animal had ever been known to be struck by such a catastrophe. Rabbits remained rare for years then began to revive. But so did the disease which still sweeps back and forth across the land whenever rabbits increase though with each return its effect is decidedly less lethal.

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