The Otago Regional Council will seek pest-control contractors to help it with rabbit control work this winter as it expects at least two properties to default on their management plans.
Landowners are required under the council's pest management strategy to keep rabbit numbers at level 3 on the Modified Maclean Scale (MAL).
If numbers were higher, landowners were expected to provide the council with a management plan outlining how they would reduce the numbers.
Environmental services manager Martin King said the council had recently finished auditing 52 approved property plans, finding that most had adhered to their control plans.
Six notices of direction had been issued to landowners who had failed to submit a plan or were required to put a plan in place within two months. The problem properties were in Central Otago.
The notices had been issued as a result of follow-up inspections which confirmed rabbit populations varied between MAL five and seven.
Regional services director Jeff Donaldson said it was "highly likely" at least two of the properties under a notice of direction would default.
In that situation, the regional council would go ahead and do the work and then bill the landowner for it.
While the council's regional services arm was capable of doing the rabbit control work, there would be more work than it could do, he said. So the council would be advertising for rabbit-control contractors to assist with the work.
Chief executive Graeme Martin said every effort would be made to get the landowner to do the work themselves, as otherwise it was a difficult legal pathway for the council.
An Otago Regional Council staff member and two dogs failed to find any evidence of wallaby in the Lindis, St Bathans and Herbert forestry area.
The council had received a report of wallaby on a Department of Conservation reserve near St Bathans, which had followed earlier reports of other wallaby sightings on the south side of the Waitaki River.
Regional services director Jeff Donaldson said the council planned to do an aerial survey of the area once snow had fallen to see if they could find further signs of wallaby.
