Abstract
In the mid-19th century, European rabbits were released in southern New Zealand and thrived in the dry interior. Landholders recognised the need to understand rabbit behaviour, learned to identify vulnerable stages in the animal's life history and based their eradication programmes on that knowledge. Rabbit numbers changed with shifts in prevailing weather systems, and landholders used different combinations of control and extermination methods in wetter than in drier periods. Large properties needed to employ gangs of rabbiters when herbage was abundant and rabbits were common, but required fewer men when rabbits were scarce.