24 rabbits made Australia's land harsher

I was reading Bill Bryson's compelling * n a Sunburned Country* where I encountered this sobering anecdote: Although inland Australia has never been exactly verdant, much of the marginal land once experienced periods of relative lushness, sometimes lasting years, occasionally lasting decades and, it enjoyed a natural resiliency that let it spring back after droughts. Then, in 1859, a man named Thomas Austin, a land owner in Winchelsea, Victoria, a little south of where I was now made a big mistake. He imported twenty-four wild rabbits from England and released them into the bush for sport. It is hardly a novel observation that rabbits breed with a certain keenness. Within a couple of years, they had entirely overrun Austin's property, and were spreading into neighbouring districts. 50 million years of isolation had left Australia without a single predator or parasite, able even to recognise rabbits much less dying of them, and so they proliferated amazingly. Collectively their…