"We are so close to getting them beaten,” he says. "From the numbers we had and the environmental damage they caused over a very long period of time – we rarely see a rabbit now.”

David runs a few Shorthorn cows and a self-replacing merino flock at about one sheep to 6 hectares on his Broken Hill property, Thackaringa Station. He has seen at first hand the devastation rabbits can wreak; he also knows the huge benefits to productivity and the environment that an unrelenting control campaign can bring. The threatened species, Purple Wood Wattle (Acacia Carnei) is making a come-back and paddocks that were ripped 14 years ago are consistently more productive than elsewhere.

“You only need one or two rabbits per square kilometre to cause very significant environmental damage and completely suppress regeneration of perennial species.”

Rabbit Calicivirus Disease (RCD) further decimated the pest but David Lord contends that it is only in conjunction with a concerted warren ripping campaign that you can hope to finally beat them.

Whether mustering during the day, checking waters at night or simply going for a drive, a hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) is never out of David Lord’s reach.

“The brilliant thing about the GPS is you can stick them in your pocket and when you’re mustering and you see a warren you’ve missed or perhaps it might have reopened, which is a very rare occurrence, you just press mark and enter, and keep riding. It’s so very efficient.”

Since 1992 he has been logging rabbit warrens, downloading the way-points into his computer, then retrieving them latter to accurately guide the dozer during the ripping campaign.

In the latest round of ripping 17,000 out 26,000 known warrens on Thackaringa have been destroyed and David Lord estimates that to be within 5% of the actual figure. While we’re mustering after ripping, we keep entering the way-points of warrens we’ve missed to build up a maintenance file for future action.”

Thackaringa experience has shown a 250 horsepower bulldozer to have a 60% wider ripping path than the more commonly used 140 horsepower machine. This has increased the work-rate from a maximum of 18 warrens per hour to 32, with an average of 26, and has pulled the cost per warren back to 1990 prices.

According to David Lord, they are so close to having the rabbit beaten.

“We need a big push to continued research into enhancing RCD and seeking out another biological agent,” he says. There’s just not enough money being spent, particularly when we are so close. I don’t think there’s any other invasive species in Australia that we could say we’re anywhere near close to having control over.

“We’re so close.”