A tough new pest management strategy will soon become operative, forcing landowners to ensure rabbit numbers conform to a new lower standard by 2012.
The Otago Regional Council's proposed strategy was appealed but a resolution to Contact Energy's appeal was expected to be lodged with the Environment Court this week, the policy and resource planing committee heard this week.
That meant the proposed strategy would be presented to the committee's next meeting for sealing and a date to become operative.
Cr Butcher said it was important the plan became operative soon so farmers could start preparing to get numbers down.
Cr Stephen Woodhead said the reason for the strategy's MAL3 rabbit level was that maintaining populations at MAL4 or MAL5 level meant the population was in a "position to quickly explode".
"Managing pests at a lower level was a relatively cheap and simple control method."
The strategy allowed a transition period of four years, he said.
"It should get us out of the cycle of expensive poisoning operations responding to rabbit population explosions. The ultimate goal is a lot more sustainable pest management."
It would mean economic difficulties for some in the transition, but the long-term goal would put them in a much better position, Cr Woodhead said.
Resource management director Selva Selvarajah said the new strategy guided the council in how to deal with and prioritise "hot spots".
Once the plan was operational, the council would visit each property exceeding MAL3 to assess the management plan for getting numbers down.
The plan also gave farmers more flexibility in ways of dealing with high rabbit numbers as long as they were successful.
