Nursery practices influence comparative damage to juvenile blue gum by wallabies ( Wallabia bicolor) and European rabbits ( Oryctolagus cuniculus)

Anecdotal reports suggest that some provenances of juvenile blue gum are browsed less frequently by wallabies and rabbits in plantations. Trials were conducted as randomised free-choice experiments using single species enclosures of wallabies and rabbits to investigate differential selection of juvenile blue gum. In the first experiment, nine morphometrically similar provenances of blue gum and a single provenance of Monterey pine were randomly selected from nursery stock. Variability in the provenances damaged by both wallabies and rabbits was highly significant ( P