Bunny bloodbath haunts Mandela jail

Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela served 18 years imprisonment, was accorded World Heritage Status in 1999 with a citation that said "Robben Island and its prison buildings symbolise the triumph of the human spirit of freedom and of democracy over oppression."

But the place of pilgrimage for thousands of tourists is crumbling. Rabbits, breeding at an uncontrollable rate, are creating a labyrinth of tunnels in search of food and shelter.

The rabbits were deliberately introduced by Dutch sailors over three centuries ago, probably as a source of fresh meat.

Over the subsequent 350 years, the population was kept under control by residents and visitors, including transported convicts, soldiers, and guards, as the island evolved from a military stronghold, to a leper colony and place of exile, before it became a prison.

Each day, more than 1,000 visitors board ferries in Cape Town that in 45 minutes carry them back into history.

A bus ride is included in the tour, and many people peering out the windows notice rabbits hopping near the road. "Oh look, a bunny!" visitors exclaim, and many go on to add, "And there's another, and another."

The multiplying rabbits have burrowed beneath the historic buildings and denuded the place of the leafy plants that keep the soil from turning into a dust bowl.

For the island's managers, the rabbits are viewed simply as vermin. Various efforts have been made to control the population but every idea has failed. Now the most straightforward approach has begun to succeed – marksmen go out at night and shoot them.

There has been a reluctance to resort to guns. With the release of Mandela in 1990, the island became a symbol for the determined triumph of the human spirit. Somehow the gory slaughter of small, whiskered mammals seemed inappropriate.

"No-one is in favour of blood being spilled on Robben Island, but the island has a finite capacity, and with the rabbits burrowing under the foundation of priceless World Heritage Site buildings, we agreed something had to be done," said Allan Perrins, head of the area's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Chris Wilke, one of the hired marksmen, says that on a cool, calm night he can bag 25 animals an hour.

Since mid-October, 5,300 rabbits have been killed, along with 78 unwanted deer and 38 feral cats. Wilke estimates there are about 8,000 rabbits left.

Each night, two hunters traverse the island on fat-tyred bikes, pointing searchlights into the scrub. The rabbits sometimes stop to stare at the beam. The marksmen aim for the head with .22-calibre rifles.

"I can't say this killing is fun, but I do feel good about it," said Wilke.

The plastic storage bin on his vehicle was nearly filled with carcases. "This work is conservation. These rabbits don't belong here. They are devastating the island."

The females can breed at three months of age and are capable of delivering litters of eight six times a year.

For centuries, Robben Island's rabbits were hunted for food or sport, keeping the numbers manageable. Even while the place was a prison, guards with rifles stalked the rabbits at night. But with the closing of the prison, the shooting eventually stopped. Soon there were so many rabbits – and so little food – that many seemed to be starving. "They were literally climbing up trees to eat anything that was green," Perrins said.

Solutions required a sensitivity to public opinion. An early proposal was to relocate the rabbits to the mainland, an idea deemed particularly dimwitted by government authorities. Rabbits wildly proliferating on Robben Island was bad enough; freeing the fruitful to multiply across the nation could be disastrous.

Instead, traps were set to capture the rabbits and painlessly kill them by lethal injection.

But the rabbits proved difficult to catch. Worse, when the animals were "put to sleep" their terrorised faces and quivering bodies no longer made the needle seem more compassionate than the bullet.

There has been little organised resistance to the hunt, though several animal rights activists are appalled, arguing that the kill suggests the spirit of apartheid, with the rabbits considered so inferior they are unworthy of life.

"Robben Island is almost a holy place, and to turn it into a killing field is so inappropriate, so disgraceful, so dirty, so immoral," said animal rights advocate Cicely Blumberg.

To make the killing appear less ruthless, the island's management recently announced that meat from the skinned animals would be donated to the poor.

But while South Africa has an overabundance of the destitute, few seem accustomed to the taste of rabbit.

For now, the meat remains in a walk-in freezer in the island's slaughterhouse.