Rabbit-proof fence
pest-exclusion fence constructed between 1901 and 1907 to keep rabbits and other agricultural pests, from the east, out of Western Australian pastoral areas
The State Barrier Fence, formerly known as the Rabbit-Proof Fence, the State Vermin Barrier Fence, and the Emu Fence, is a series of pest-exclusion fences originally constructed between 1902 and 1907 to keep rabbits and other agricultural pests from entering Western Australia from the east.
There are three fences in Western Australia: the original No. 1 Fence crosses the state from north to south, No. 2 Fence is smaller and further west, and No. 3 Fence is smaller still and runs east–west. The fences took six years to build. When completed, the rabbit-proof fence (including all three fences) stretched 3,256 kilometres (2,023 mi). The cost to build each kilometre of fence at the time was about $250 (equivalent to $42,000 in 2022).
When it was completed in 1907, the 1,833-kilometre (1,139 mi) No. 1 Fence was the longest unbroken fence in the world.
“Rabbit-proof fence” enters the record as pest-exclusion fence constructed between 1901 and 1907 to keep rabbits and other agricultural pests, from the east, out of Western Australian pastoral areas. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rabbit-proof, fence and pest-exclusion can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1974911. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1902, 1907 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rabbit-proof fence” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.