Australia once declared war on rabbits, and the outcome was even stranger than the Emu War
Australia’s long fight with invasive animals is usually summed up by the 1932 Emu War in Western Australia. But the stranger and more consequential campaign came in 1950, when officials approved a virus to kill rabbits that had spread across much of the country.
Australia’s 1950 rabbit offensive was biological, not military
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, or CSIRO, confirmed that myxomatosis was first released for field use in Australia in 1950 after earlier trials, and the federal government backed the program as rabbit numbers were estimated at about 600 million. According to the National Museum of Australia, European rabbits had multiplied from animals introduced in Victoria in 1859 by Thomas Austin.
The scale was economic as well as ecological. CSIRO said rabbits were stripping pasture, damaging crops and accelerating erosion across farming districts by the mid 20th century. In some areas, officials had already tried fencing, trapping and poison, but those methods had not controlled populations at a national scale.
The initial results were dramatic. CSIRO reported that myxomatosis killed well over 99 percent of infected rabbits in early outbreaks, and national numbers fell sharply during the 1950s. That made the rabbit campaign very different from the Emu War, which involved soldiers in 1932 and ended without a lasting solution.
The impact was felt hardest in states like Queensland and New South Wales
Queensland and New South Wales were central to the rabbit crisis because both states had large grazing districts where rabbits competed directly with sheep and cattle industries. The National Library of Australia and state records show rabbit plagues were a recurring problem across inland communities before 1950, with fences and bounty systems used for decades.
What is confirmed is that myxomatosis spread quickly through southeastern Australia once mosquitoes and fleas carried it between rabbit populations, according to CSIRO histories. What is less precise is a single verified state-by-state death count from the first wave, because national summaries are far more common than local tallies in public historical records.
For residents and landholders, the effect was visible. CSIRO and later academic reviews said pasture recovery followed in many rural areas after rabbit numbers dropped in the 1950s. That mattered in places like western New South Wales, where grazing land was directly tied to farm income and wool production.
The strange outcome was that rabbits adapted, so Australia changed tactics again
The reason the campaign did not end the problem is evolution. CSIRO and published research confirmed that rabbits gradually developed genetic resistance to myxomatosis, while the virus itself also became less lethal in some strains over time, creating a more stable host-virus relationship by the late 20th century.
That led Australia to try another major biological control in 1995, when rabbit haemorrhagic disease escaped testing on Wardang Island in South Australia and spread on the mainland, according to the Australian government and CSIRO. Officials later treated that virus as a formal control tool after the accidental release had already happened.
For people today, the practical takeaway is simple. Australia never fully solved its rabbit problem with a single campaign, and government agencies still treat invasive rabbits as a major pest in 2024 because of farm losses and biodiversity damage. The rabbit war produced one of the largest biological control efforts on record, but it ended as an ongoing management fight, not a final victory.
