But the council says its role is as a regulator, not a pest contractor.
The farmer, who asked not to be named, said the council staff inspecting properties and counting rabbits should be controlling the pest instead.
He believed staff had the time to control rabbits because they only had a target to inspect 130 properties in a year from July 1.
‘‘They set themselves a low bar.’’
He was poisoning rabbits on his farm but too many property occupiers were doing no rabbit control.
‘‘The only way it is going to work if everyone starts to do something but the only ones who can make that happen is the regional council.’’
The council need to co-ordinate and run a rabbit control team to unite landowners in the fight.
‘‘It’s the only way it’s going to work.’’
The council had the necessary rabbit-control equipment but were not using it.
‘‘They’ve got the gear and the manpower.’’
The cost for an individual property owner to buy the gear was ‘‘uneconomic’’, especially for owners of smaller blocks.
If the council did not use the equipment, they should make it available to contractors, he said.
ORC environmental implementation manager Andrea Howard said many people had fond memories of the ‘‘Rabbit Board days’’ when rabbit control was backed ‘‘by a huge Government subsidy, up to 90%’’.
When regional councils took over the role of rabbit boards in 1989, ORC bought the board’s rabbit-control assets and operated a commercial rabbit-control business until 2015.
The business was closed because the council had a conflict of interest being a regulator, competing against other pest contractors.
Compliance inspection work had been ‘‘a bit light’’ due to a lack of staff in the past.
Council staff inspected the amount of rabbit droppings on a property to determine if the land occupiers were complying.
She agreed the inspection target of 130 properties was too low, a number set when fewer inspection staff were employed.
The council had more staff now and inspection numbers had increased in the past year, she said.
Nearly 80 large scale rural properties had been inspected since July 1 this year.
Of those, about 60% were compliant and about 28% were nearly compliant.
‘‘The problem is about 12%.’’
Staff visited more than 400 occupiers of semi-rural properties, such as lifestyle blocks, and urban properties, since July 1 this year.
Areas of current focus were on Lake Hayes, Gibbston and Moeraki.
She expected the inspection momentum to continue for the rest of the financial year.
More property occupiers controlling rabbits had increased the number of pest contractors working in Otago, Ms Howard said.
‘‘We are creating a huge demand.’’
She was confident there were enough pest contractors to meet the demand and the council could connect people to them.
The contractors had enough gear and the council’s rabbit-control assets were not needed to meet demand.
Next month, staff would be making recommendation on what should be done with those assets.
‘‘Most of them don’t meet health and safety standards to be operating.’’
The council was working on ways to incentivise rabbit management behaviour.
‘‘It could be done in many ways and we haven’t landed on what that looks like. I’ll be taking a paper to council next month, which will be outlining some of those options.’’
Hypothetically, an incentive could be funding to get a group of landowners to develop a rabbit management plan.
Some land occupiers controlling rabbits had voiced frustrations about their neighbours — a land occupier, either private, Government department or council — not doing anything to control the pest.
The council treated all land occupiers the same, including themselves.
‘‘We are fair and we are consistent.’’
An objective was to make it easy for land occupiers to be compliant with the rabbit rules.
Rabbits would never be eradicated from New Zealand but she believed people were committed to managing the population long term and the council must ‘‘encourage them to continue to care and do their bit’’.
The council had been ‘‘shy on the big stick approach’’.
However, a policy had been developed in July this year on the legal framework if a land occupier failed to comply with the rules, including getting a rabbit control contractor to do the required work and send the occupier the bill.
If the occupier failed to pay then the cost would be put on the land title.
The council had not put a rabbit-control cost on a land title since she had worked there ‘‘but it entirely looks like we will get to that situation in the future’’ — as it was fair to the other people doing rabbit control on their properties.
‘‘We need everyone to play their part.’’
