The rabbit-proof fence, the famous barrier built a century ago in Western Australia to keep marauding rabbits out of farmland, is falling into disrepair. Wild dogs are getting through holes in the structure, which stretches 1,822km across some of the remotest parts of the state, and are attacking sheep. Farmers say the fence urgently needs upgrading.
The barrier, which featured in the film Rabbit-Proof Fence, based on the book by Aboriginal author Doris Pilkington Garimara, was built to help halt a plague of rabbits across Australia. An English farmer, Thomas Austin, imported 24 rabbits in 1859 and freed them onto his property in Victoria. Within a few years millions of rabbits were nibbling their way across the country, leaving denuded landscapes in their wake.
Rabbits reached Western Australia in 1891, and the construction of a barrier began two years later. The No. 1 rabbit-proof fence, stretching from 129km west of Esperance to near Cape Keraudren, was completed in 1907; then the longest fence in the world. No. 2 fence and No. 3 fence brought the total length to 3,236km.
Unfortunately, rabbits bypassed the southern end of the first barrier before it was completed, but the state barrier fence, as the three fences were renamed, limited the numbers of rabbits that ravaged agricultural land and still provides protection against mobs of migrating emus.
The numbers of wild dogs, dingoes, hybrid dogs and feral domesticated dogs, have been steadily rising in Western Australia and farmers say they are breaching the fence by digging under it or using holes in the netting.
Farmer Ken Graham said wild dogs got onto his property 51km east of Hyden through the fence about once a week and he has had to move his 2,000 ewes to protect them.
Graham said some parts of the fence on his property were rusting and broken.
“We would all love the government to put some money into the fence and upgrade it,” he told the West Australian newspaper.
Maintenance is the joint responsibility of the Department of Agriculture and the Agriculture Protection Board and A$400,000 (US$382,000) is spent each year on staffing and repairs. Three maintenance men work all year, constantly driving along the fence and carrying out repairs.
Craig Robins, the state barrier fence project manager, agreed that increasing numbers of wild dogs was putting the fence under pressure.
“It is in varying degrees of condition, from rabbit-netting fence dating back in some places to the 1950s, but some parts date back earlier than that,” he said. “It is a tough job trying to maintain it.”
Rob Gillam, president of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association, farms 250,000 hectares at Yalgoo, where the fence runs through his property.
He said the authorities did their best to maintain the fence but its length and the ever-increasing numbers of wild dogs meant they were fighting an uphill battle.
“Some people are losing 10 to 20 sheep a day,” he said. “Wild dogs tear into flocks of sheep, ripping and tearing them apart. It’s a terrible thing. The animals that are left suffering have to be shot.”
Gillam said his association supported upgrading the fence to make it dog-proof. That would entail a skirt of netting along the bottom to deter dogs from digging under it and possibly raising the height.
The cost of upgrading the fence to deter wild dogs is being assessed, and a further fence 400km east is also being considered.
Pilkington Garimara’s book told the story of three Aboriginal girls, including her mother, who were removed from their community in Western Australia in the 1930s, but escaped and traveled back to their families using the fence as a guide. On Friday, she was given a lifetime achievement award for her contribution to indigenous arts.
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