PAP 2024-5 Final Report

Reflections

Initially the project was expected to produce the typical strategy package with a mission and actions. Such a plan works well when there is a hierarchical project and ideas can be filtered and organised. Unfortunately, working with a group of people as diverse as the landholders on the Bellarine, in contexts almost as diverse, and with very variable resources, relationships and trust are soon seen to be more important than anything else. Several single strategy documents, initially looking good, were soon found to not be highly valued. Several attempts to produce them, on the other hand, led to a lot of valuable learning. Instead, we have found that working with people, developing trust with us and networks between them, and then acting, is reasonably challenging but can be very effective and rewarding.

We worked with community members of all sorts and earned from them the trust we needed to build the momentum for our project which is now valued by participants. We have been overwhelmed by the offers of help and support, especially in recent weeks. Our aim is to enable landholders to help themselves.

The grant enabled the employment of three people to work with the leader (Liddy Nevile). The facilitators brought skills in event management, research and people engagement but only one was a ‘Landcare’ expert. Having a second person enabled the leader to work comfortably on the project, which she did probably for 5 half days each week. Given the pairing, it was easy to work with others who identified with the project. Given the support for the final on-ground activity, a Blitz day in May 2025, it is easy to see how effective the project has been. See https://www.rabbit-sweep.org/newsletters/may-10-2025-blitz

All members of the BLG RAG were among the 20 volunteers who made the Blitz event a success. They were rewarded by 80 registrations at the three venues made available for the event. See https://www.rabbit-sweep.org/useful-docs/may-10-stats. The follow-up has been questions from public and private landholders about how the momentum can be maintained (see above for some ideas). Such support verifies the value of listening to landholders and the careful building of contacts and ideas which is emerging on the website – as an online resource, printable as a brochure, or as a record. The event venues were contributed by Parks Victoria and two private landholders. They did preparatory work to make the venues suitable and the private landholders paid for the demonstrations that thrilled the participants. We are very grateful for this support.

Some of the BLG committee have indicated support for the creation of a new Landcare entity to focus only on rabbit control but this is yet to be endorsed formally. Such a group, supported by its users, is a popular approach for the future, especially as it could operate across the range of BCN members.

Already such work as the Rabbit Proof fence to the Bellarine, building online volunteering opportunities, seeking crowd-funding, working with the Geelong Intrepid Landcare Group to introduce bandicoots, ... are envisaged. The belief that there are willing and supportive public and private landholders who will help secure the Rabbit Sweep’s future is a significant outcome of the project.

Capacity Building

Recently we had an activity and for that we worked with private and public landholders. We were able to send printed invitations to 184 landholders in one area of the Bellarine (paid for by CoGG). This was seen as an exercise in outreach as much as an invitation to the specific event – we got good feedback from people who had received it and they now know there is someone worrying about rabbits who wants to help them.

Landholders often repeat what they have done in the past until they abandon a task for lack of results. This is very true in the case of landholders with rabbits. Controlling them is not a one-off exercise and can be very frustrating for a number of years even when well done. Given the vagaries of rabbit abatement tasks, many landholders are disappointed early and abandon the problem. Experience shows that a fresh approach is often necessary, that it should be supported by ‘social inclusion’, and that it will need to be followed up if it is to make a difference.

We have dug into the science about rabbit control and converted complex ideas into useful info that practitioners can easily access. We believe social media helps raise attention but it takes more to equip landholders to do productive on-ground work. We are also aware of the range of devices and forms of info that landholders might want so our catalogue differentiates between research papers and amateur videos, for example. See our growing collection of ‘useful info’ at https://www.rabbit-sweep.org/useful-docs/useful-info

Our approach has been to think about what landholders need to be motivated and effective. Teaching them about rabbit control is important but finding a way to make them more interested and active is not just about the how. We have reached out to members of the Landcare community who in other ‘lives’ work on community engagement in whatever subject domain.

We have been able to develop our work and prepare for future work given the facilitators we have had. Three for one job with gaps was challenging but all three are planners and were able to build on each others’ work and develop models of management and templates that can be used in the future as part of what we are calling the infrastructure for the future. These were developed in collaboration with the relevant participants and are stored to be used again. Partnerships, risk management, communication, publicity opportunities, etc these actions now have documentary precedents that we believe can be re-used even by those who may not have been able to develop them. One example is the idea of arranging an event as one might a fair, with small focussed demonstrations and discussions tailored at the time to the participants’ interests and circumstances. Another is the adoption of the typical academic use of ‘posters’.

At academic and scientific conferences, students and others are invited to display their ideas and work in a poster format, less rigorous than is needed for a refereed paper. Such posters are usually selected by senior researchers and experts and chosen because they speak easily to their audience and seen by a wise range of potential participants. The National Landcare Conference does this. The Rabbit Sweep has been turning information resources on their website into posters to prompt discussion. We believe it is a very effective way to draw attention to the information and also to support the dissemination of valuable information that otherwise usually remains unavailable. The posters can be displayed at suitable events and, with a phone, a user can capture the idea and how to learn more. Viewers of posters often converse with each other, adding useful links to their networks.

We propose that the tasks undertaken in rabbit control not only be seen as necessarily integrated, but that they be recast. This is the work, for example, of seeing that for a warren to be fumigated, different people’s skills need to be engaged. Showing people warrens and their construction and how to close the entrances can set them up to provide ready access to a very quick fumigation activity for a certified user of fumigation – it makes it easier to achieve more when neighbours work together and obviates the need for lots of people to undergo expensive and time-consuming certification.

The VRAN boot camps have provided excellent opportunities for conversations and rethinks about the problem and strategies initiated by them have been adopted. We no longer offer lectures on rabbit control but we do have events at which people get their hands dirty and can ask ‘silly’ questions. We have chosen venues that inform participants simply because they are experienced – showing the worst scenarios, often, with poor rabbit control and shocking conditions as well as some exemplary locations.

We have encouraged local landholders to attend other events offered by experts. We have several times been participants in events supported or run by our neighbour the Golden Plains Council officer Dale Smithyman.

We have also provided opportunities for people to engage with the research. Landcarers across the Bellarine were invited to an evening when a talk by Professor Euan Ritchie was watched and followed by questions fielded by experienced local landholders, Fiona Conroy and Richard Weatherley. This event attracted a significant number of outsiders to the Landcare meeting.

Our on-ground events have been arranged and presented in close collaboration with local government and commercial leaders. Bellarine Landcare itself has been a strong participant and the Rabbit Action Group and VRAN associates have always been present. Parks Victoria, CoGG, a Rail Trail custodian, Andrew Wilkens (rabbit-proof fencer), Wayne Watkins (a shooter), and Mathew Cobb (with an excavator) were at the May 10 event.

We have not always done the obvious. Our events have challenged BLG in some cases because distributed venues and other qualities that can be seen as risks increase the work required to hold events. We had RMIT University researchers with sandwich boards in the Geelong Market and decided this is a particularly effective way to attract new players to rabbit control. We have down-played the typical images of rabbits in traps and considered the value of working to bring back bandicoots and for this reason to have a need to eliminate rabbits.

We are interested in making the Bellarine peninsula an ‘island’ – well, for promotional purposes. We suggest building a rabbit-proof fence at Moolap to achieve this. In fact, we decided a virtual fence would be sufficient and we only need 3 ‘gates’ to identify the project (one on the Portarlington Hwy, one on the Bellarine Hwy, and one on the bridge at Barwon Heads). Such a gate/fence could be partially constructed with large, sponsored, ‘bricks’.

And we have experienced the difficulties often seen as risks: we have had 3 facilitators in the space of a few months. Activities depend on people and they have families. Sadly one facilitator’s mother was killed in a car crash in Columbia, one only had limited time available while anticipating a new job, and one had an elderly family member unexpectedly needing help. For one event, we had a very hot day (42°) and there was an election called for our original Blitz day. It has been hard to stick with our planned time-schedule. This is what happens when groups of people and operations are, for the best reasons, diverse. We continue to consider the vagaries of the weather a risk.

Raising Awareness

We are a Landcare group but see the rabbit work as belonging to the whole community because at home everyone too often seems to have rabbits.

To this end we have been actively involved with the Bellarine Catchment Network, interacting with groups with a wide range of interests. We are the only rabbit-focussed group on the Bellarine so consider every other group’s members who are landholders to be a constituent of our project.

We have used events not only for themselves but also for publicity. Our outreach for our May 10 2025 event included a mail-out to 184 local landholders of the proposed event and our activities, social media, a small local letter-box drop, a PR statement to local newspapers, an invitation to all BCN member organisations and more. All sources were recognised in final feedback from May 10 participants.

We have developed our catalogue for multiple reasons but one is that it gives us an opportunity to contact other groups with a customisable interface to the wealth of information available online. Populating the catalogue with descriptions of others’ resources to the point where it is fully functional is on-going.

Not all landholders want to or can be bothered to read scientific reports about rabbits and control techniques but they need access to this information. We have been informed in many ways and are slowly summarising this information and making it available in palatable forms. Added to this is the informally developed information about rabbit control that is usually hard to access. We can encourage others with good ideas based on experience to provide us with short explanations (perhaps recorded on a phone) that can be shared and identified in our catalogue.

Our website is perhaps somewhat unusual. Whereas most entities use multiple software applications (such as Dropbox, Google docs., Humanitix, etc), we have used our website. All is available to the registered managers but only some to the public. This means all is archived and it protects privacy etc. In addition, there is an awareness among us of the need for accessible information so basic rules for inclusive design are implemented. This is almost always lacking in community websites despite it being known 20% of the community need well-formed online experiences. (Liddy Nevile is an international leader in this field.)

Partnership and Collaboration

We have all along been very aware of the need for sustained work if rabbits are to be controlled. We have thus had to recognize the difference between getting rid of a few rabbits and ensuring that some environment is rabbit free continuously. The cost of such long term work is committal and financial so we have had to think how to manage these two kinds of activities.

It is also a challenge that Australia has only had rabbits for a couple of hundred years and they are damaging land that is precious to our First Nation peoples. So far we have worked on the how with respect to rabbits but it is our intention to work in the future with Traditional Owners to decide what should be the activities employed in the future, when and where. We think this is an exciting, vital but challenging space to work in as soon as we can. Liddy has been involved in a number of projects with Traditional Owners in the past and hopes this work can happen soon.

VRAN – we have had Liddy at 2 VRAN bootcamps and at the VRAN Master bootcamp. Avoiding duplicating work but making it collaborative is the approach being taken. Neil Devanny from VRAN has been to visit us and we talked about our plans, how we can work with VRAN, and what VRN suggests. We have been in regular contact with each other through the local Rabbit Sweep events. Tim Bloomfield and Brad Spear, in particular, have been active participants in our events.

BCN - BLG is a member of the BCN and we have had representation at their meetings and notices of our existence and events in the BCN news for members. We have met with the Swan Bay Environment Group committee and several members have participated in our events. Our recent Blitz was held in their region on private and public land and paid for by private landholders.

Rabbit Free Australia – the Rabbit Sweep joined Rabbit Free Australia (RFA) and has found what they have done and reported online, very helpful. We have also participated in their webinars which are very informative at a somewhat high level so boosting our knowledge considerably. Through RFA we have come to know and appreciate the work of others to whom they have pointed us – and we pass on what we learn to our participants. We have met with the Chair of Rabbit Free Australia and are looking forward to working more closely with RFA in the future.

The National Rabbit Action Coordinator.- the Rabbit Sweep in the past has sought advice from Heidi Kleinert at VRAN, as she was, and has continued the relationship now she is the National Coordinator. We feel strongly that we need leadership in the field of rabbit control and despite all the differences to be managed, a national approach is needed. There is an undercurrent of concern that rabbit-control certification should not be subject to the same wide-ranging training as for control of rodents in silos.

City of Greater Geelong – CoGG has been wonderful. As a council they have taken rabbit control seriously and the staff have been remarkably helpful. We have shared work where possible and are constantly enriching our partnership. We believe that it is necessary to expand controlled regions rather than have lots of isolated ‘clean’ areas and that working with CoGG we can greatly increase the areas and control of them to the benefit of both the public and private land involved.

Regretfully, we did not manage to work with any Traditional Owner groups but plan to in the future.

Lessons Learned

We have described many aspects of the project above. In summary, what we think worked:

1. targeting what we see as cells – the ‘Swan Bay landholders’, the Drysdale Landholders
2. putting experience before listening
3. being flexible (changing date for May 10 clashed with 3 significant experts significant birthdays!)
4. listening to reflective, careful feedback after meetings and events
5. not being bound by but supported by a formal (RAG) committee
6. having a small committed team – collective action
7. agility – taking an action research approach
8. having facilitators who practice the facilitator role as enabling others
9. working at one level of abstraction from the tasks and events – cognitive presence
10. having a good relationship with really engaging expert experts

Overall working on the local landholder network model and collaboration were the hallmarks of the work.

Lessons Applied

Most of the project was about finding better, more effective ways to engage landholders in rabbit control. It soon became apparent that this is not a ‘one size fits all’ exercise. Taking risks and asking people to be involved, even if it is only in a demo, often leads to unexpected positive results and a lasting relationship for the future.

‘Good’ farmers tend to consider rabbit control a reasonable duty and many work together to manage their efforts. They show that working together is far more effective than working alone, first because the results of the work are more sustainable, but also because they benefit from being a little bit organised, and enjoy working with neighbourhood people.

People on smaller properties often are not sure what to do, think it might not matter as it seems everyone else is not controlling their rabbits, lack the necessary knowledge or skills or financial means or have tried before and failed. There are, in this group, many landholders who do not care about the state of the land – they intend to sell and it should not benefit them to control the rabbits, they reason. Absentee landlords often fit into this category. Finally there are what are described as peri-urban landholders. They have another set of challenges.

In all cases, there are times of year when action is more effective, types of action that need to be tailored to the situation, and many tricks that can be shared by experienced rabbit controllers. But for the peri-urban people, there is still a need for better scientific and practical ways of controlling rabbits. We are keenly working on this with the RFA group.

We do not think landholders should be waiting for grants but that they have an obligation to care for the land.

It has been relatively easy to engage with neighbourhood groups of large landholders and we have worked with them re-thinking the best strategies etc. We encourage them to form a ‘group’ and we want to help grow the group into a netwrok. Typically, their neighbourhoods will include public land and so engaging with the public landholder and integrating all of their efforts is important. We have started this cross entity engagement and worked closely with CoGG, in particular. We are planning to work more closely in 2025 with Barwon Water.

Cost is a major factor for the landholders and we have started to introduce the idea of short-term vs long-term approaches such as ripping and implosion and information about the cost and value of the two approaches (which may need to be used together). It is ‘estimated’ that in the end rabbits cost the land about $10 per year per hectare. It is better to avoid this loss for ever by spending a bit now.

Smaller properties tend to have their own set of problems, including rabbits under buildings and flora providing habitat (eg gorse). For these landholders, given that some want the work done and some want to do it themselves, it is important to make available lots of practical information from which they can choose what to do. We have split the tasks in a new way to be more economical with working time and to think about how to include the family and protect the domestic animals as this is usually important.

In general, we believe smaller land-holders can be helped in reasonable ways but many will need ‘awakening’ and some pressure – perhaps from neighbours. Working in neighbourly groups is a success factor in most cases. Fences are a problem as they might be inadequate or they might prop up kakuyu grass hideouts, for example.

Finally, we consider the peri-urban group to have some significant challenges by virtue of being on small properties with families and domestic animals. We are not convinced there is an obvious answer to what they should do. We have previously worked on the myth that rabbit bait is a second-generation killer. We believe it is not but that second generation rodenticides are the problem. See our poster which is now visible across Australia. We have been keen to learn more about bait stations that are secure and safe. Nevertheless, we are aware that the available rabbit bait is not pleasant for rabbits and should be used strictly according to the instructions. In addition, we are promoting tricks such as mixing in some pet-rabbit food, or adding spinach/silverbeet juice to make it more attractive. Rabbit Free Australia is working in particular on the peri-urban issue and we are closely following their advice and participating in their webinars. In peri-urban areas, sometimes it is public land that is causing the problem with rabbits but we realise all the landholders are wondering what to do.

Future Directions

BLG has a long-standing Rabbit Action Group. The Rabbit Sweep has been supported to find better ways of controlling rabbits for landholders. It is time now to implement more of the strategies.

One idea is to form a non-distributing co-operative for rabbit control that can operate across the peninsula. This would be a new Landcare group dedicated to supporting local landholder networks. The idea so far is for this to be an entity that helps and charges – whether someone works with contractors or volunteers, we believe landholders should pay for the services they get but should be helped to do this. Developing a suitable infrastructure for landholder networks is to be the mission of the entity and maximising the use of technology should be included. Maintenance of shared equipment, access to expertise, advice about weather, seasons, environments, etc can all be included.

Funding

The grant was for $30,800. It was primarily to provide a facilitator to work with volunteered BLG time to develop a long-term strategy for rabbit control on the Bellarine. The budget included volunteer time to be worked by the leader. In fact, the project leader worked with the facilitator about 0.5 EFT each week for the duration of the project.

A facilitator was employed after some time but within weeks her mother was killed in a car crash in Columbia. This meant the facilitator was not available for a while and then permanently. A second facilitator was found – an architect with planning skills and she was able to work part-time for a couple of months. After Christmas, a third facilitator was appointed and she has worked wonderfully. All in all it has been hard to achieve all the goals without a continuous facilitator. We spent most of the grant on a facilitator who worked at least the same number of hours as the BLG’s voluntary project leader.

We were keen to build a catalogue to solve our own problem with all the resources online but also to help others. The programmer was, unfortunately, fairly slow to get going on this exercise. When the catalogue emerged, there were all the usual development issues and considerable work has been done to make it operate as we’d like. This development involved both basic programming and some high-level architecture. Populating the catalogue is essential if it is to be a success but it is ready now for invitation to resource providers to add in their resources – hopefully a promotional activity in the sending of the invitations. We have not had as much help from volunteers as we had hoped for but trust as the catalogue becomes more useful, that will change.

We tried a number of ways to engage with landholders – having had an inspiring effort made on our behalf by RMIT university students who met people at the Geelong market and then interviewed a number for a very useful report they gave us (View full report in .pdf format).

We have arranged several events but, to be honest, have been overwhelmed by the follow-up when ‘honest opinions’ have been offered. We have embraced the autonomous network approach so have not worked as a typical committee might albeit the BLG RAG committee has supported everything we’ve done. Instead, we have taken more of a higher-degree research model – given we have been trying to work out what to do for the next ten years.

What we have done is maintain a shared website with some things publicly available, and more things only for registered users (e.g. the project leader and the facilitator). See http://Rabbit-Sweep.org. In order to provide useful information, we have read a lot of research reports, talked to a lot of people in ones and twos, helped with some small on-ground events, and more. Following the VRAN model, we find on-ground activities are the best way to get commitment from participants who then ask lots of questions. These events seem to be more effective than meetings held inside.