Cemeteries across NSW are fighting an uphill battle against vandalising rabbits, which destabilise headstones, endanger graveyard workers and upset the bereaved by digging up graves.
"They normally don't dig down to the coffin, although that could happen, but mainly they cause soil subsidence and ultimately, collapse," said the National Trust's cemeteries adviser, George Gibbons.
"You have rabbits where the digging is easy, and cemeteries are in diggable country.
"It's a very common problem."
Grave subsidence occurs naturally as the coffin collapses about 20 years after burial but pests can speed up that process, Dr Gibbons said.
"Wombats are an even bigger problem because they dig larger holes and tend to be a more determined beast.
"We have tried to fill the holes with cobbles or napthalene but they come back whatever you do."
George Passas of Botany Cemetery in Sydney said rabbit burrows had three entry points that linked to a bunny "living room" up to a metre in diameter.
"We have had employees fall down in the process of digging. Typically a grave is six feet deep, but by the time you get to the third foot, bang.
"You hit the burrow and the ground gives way unexpectedly," he says.
The pests attack fresh and old graves in equal measure, leaving the dead with little hope of resting in peace.
"Some of the families are paying up to $50,000 for the monument for a relative, and it doesn't take much of a slip, especially in sandy soil, for our furry friends to undermine it.
"It can lead to a severe risk of collapse and injury," Mr Passas says.
The president of the NSW Cemeteries and Crematoria Association, Mary Thorne, said the problem is getting worse.
"I have been involved in cemeteries for 14 years and I haven't seen them as bad as they are now," she says.
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