Still do - it's less of a problem since certain methods of biological control began to be used, but Australia still has a massive rabbit problem.
I remember watching a movie called, ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’ and it was about the re-location of their native people to ‘water-down’ their population and how one girl kept escaping wherever they relocated her to, to get back to her tribe. I mean, she walked THOUSANDS of miles of that fence line to do it, too!
Rabbit-Proof Fence is a wonderful movie 'based on a true story' but also with a huge amount of left wing added fiction - including the idea that these children were removed in large numbers for reasons like watering down the population. There were genuine problems with what Australia used to do to its indigenous people, but it's been terribly exaggerated and misrepresented as well. The girls shown in Rabbit Proof Fence were actually taken into care with the cooperation of senior members of the community they were living in, because they were reaching an age where they were at risk of sexual molestation (including from some white men, because as they were half-white, there were men out there who would have regarded them as a good catch without protection). The primary intention was to protect these girls from genuine harm, and in particular, the film unfairly maligns, A.O. Neville who was the 'protector of Aborigines' in Western Australia, and who took that duty seriously. The historical documents show he was frantic to find the girls when they went missing because he believed they were in serious danger, and he was responsible for them. But the film makes him out to be some sort of racist monster.
His own words:
So few of our own people as a whole are aware of the position of Aborigine. Yet we have had the coloured man amongst us for a hundred years or more. He has died in his hundreds, nay thousands, in pain, misery and squalor, and through avoidable ill-health. Innumerable little children have perished through neglect and ignorance. The position, in some vital respects, is not much better today than it was fifty years ago. Man is entitled to a measure of happiness in his life. Yet most of these people have never known real happiness. Some are never likely to know it. The causes of their condition are many. Mainly it is not their fault, it is ours, just as it lies with us to put the matter right.
But the fence itself is real:
Number 1 Fence is 1,139 miles long. All three fences total over 2000 miles.
Rabbits cause over half a billion dollars damage to the Australian economy next year. I haven't see the figures for feral cats, but their impact will be on a similar scale. Maybe 0bama is right about Colonialism? Except now it’s all about cats! ;) http://www.myplace.edu.au/verve/_resources/Rabbit_proof_fence_in_western_australia.jpg