Rabbits have long been a scourge on the Australian landscape. Rabbits have degraded native habitat and long been the enemy of graziers. Now, the growing carbon offset industry investments in tree plantings are at risk from rising numbers of rabbits. A recent study found that rabbit numbers have been steadily increasing after being held low by rabbit calicivirus since 1996.

RabbitScan is a national community and schools and science challenge to raise awareness of the threat posed by renewed numbers of rabbits. New data, especially the extent of rabbits across Australia is critical if we are to create an evidence base for control. RabbitScan is being launched in early 2009, the 150th year since rabbits were first released in Australia.

A key component of RabbitScan is the engagement of people to ‘scan’ their landscape (school, farm, parkland, roadside reserves, ovals etc) for signs of rabbits and their damage and to load their information and images into a national online database. Spatial Vision has established an interactive web mapping site for people to record their scans. The web mapping application is designed to capture consistent survey results into a database to enable the production of a national map to be used by science and regional NRM organisations. The web mapping application is built over Google Maps.

This paper outlines the rationale for the RabbitScan web mapping application and will review preliminary outcomes of the survey and lessons learnt from conducting a national community engagement approach to this issue.