Easter Bunny or Easter Bilby?

The Bilby is a very cute little creature, native to Australia. This small burrowing bandicoot used to be found in its millions, living across 70% of our country. Sadly over the past 200 years settlement and clearing, plus the introduction of rabbits, foxes and feral cats, pushed this animal almost to extinction – in fact, entirely to extinction in South Australia.

The Easter Bilby

Foundation for Rabbit Free Australia (RFA) is a non-profit organisation established to raise community awareness of the damage to the environment done by the wild rabbit, and find ways to get rid of all the wild rabbits in this country. In 1991 RFA developed and registered the Easter Bilby campaign to raise awareness of the damage done by rabbits to native wildlife, and to raise money from royalties of Easter Bilby to fund their research programs.

In 1993, Haigh’s Chocolates made Australia’s very first Easter Bilbies – an immediate hit with our customers.  For nearly twenty years at Easter, Haigh’s Chocolates offers large and small Bilbies in both milk and dark chocolate, with part proceeds from every sale donated to RFA for their very important work.

Thanks to increased awareness and lots of hard work by a number of organisations and government departments, the Bilby is starting to make a comeback.  In South Australia, where the Bilby was once extinct, there are now estimated to be over 1500 Bilbies back in the wild

The Bilby and its struggle for survival is symbolic of the plight of many of our small native animals. Australians are concerned about our disappearing native species, and from A+ CAPEC we encourage you to celebrate Easter with a Bilby not a bunny.  Adopt the Bilby as the wildlife symbol of Easter in Australia!

If you are in Australia, buy a chocolate Bilby this Easter. Every Bilby you buy will be helping to save this precious little Australian marsupial.

HAPPY ‘BILBY’ EASTER!