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Spain battles rodent plague
Email Print Normal font Large font August 9, 2007 - 6:26AM
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AdvertisementIt's been a messy summer in Spain: raging forest fires in the Canary Islands, a blanket blackout in Barcelona, giant schools of jellyfish lurking off packed beaches.
Now comes another woe, as icky as a biblical plague: millions of mouse-like rodents called voles feasting on everything from beets to potatoes in an infestation that has prompted a desperate, scorched-earth policy in one of Spain's agricultural heartlands.
Farmers unions say the Castille-Leon region in north-central Spain is crawling with an estimated 7.5 million voles, and the local government is baffled: it doesn't know the cause - or the solution. The invasion began gently 10 months ago but has snowballed to stunning proportions.
Spanish television aired footage of scores of voles darting in and out of holes in what would normally be rich, healthy farmland, or quivering in the throes of death brought on by pesticide. Some have even made it into gardens of homes in the region's main city, Valladolid, according to news reports.
"There has never been a plague like the one we have now," said the Castille-Leon regional agriculture minister, Silvia Clemente. Officials have asked agronomists, veterinarians and biologists what on earth is happening and nobody really knows, she told Cadena Ser radio.
"There are no measures that have been proven to work against a plague of these characteristics," Clemente said.
For now, crews are fighting with fire. They started igniting controlled blazes today on previously harvested farmland to try to kill off the pests, acting with utmost care to keep the flames from spreading to bone dry terrain prone to forest fires.
The extermination bid began in Valladolid, the province hardest hit, and will gradually spread to others in coming days.
Jose Antonio del Brio, head of the local farmers' association in the town of Fresno el Viejo, where the first fires were set, said literally every farm in the area is being eaten by voles. First it was the grain crops - 40 per cent lost to them - and now beets, potatoes and corn are on the menu.
"We cannot do anything against these animals, who are taking food out of our children's mouths," del Brio said.
A vole problem was first detected in Castille-Leon in September of last year. Then, officials used chemicals to try to kill them off, but ecological groups filed a complaint and the campaign was halted. The vole population suddenly exploded.
"Nothing of what is happening with this plague falls within the expected because there are no precedents," Clemente said.
AP
Email Print Normal font Large font August 9, 2007 - 6:26AM
Advertisement
AdvertisementIt's been a messy summer in Spain: raging forest fires in the Canary Islands, a blanket blackout in Barcelona, giant schools of jellyfish lurking off packed beaches.
Now comes another woe, as icky as a biblical plague: millions of mouse-like rodents called voles feasting on everything from beets to potatoes in an infestation that has prompted a desperate, scorched-earth policy in one of Spain's agricultural heartlands.
Farmers unions say the Castille-Leon region in north-central Spain is crawling with an estimated 7.5 million voles, and the local government is baffled: it doesn't know the cause - or the solution. The invasion began gently 10 months ago but has snowballed to stunning proportions.
Spanish television aired footage of scores of voles darting in and out of holes in what would normally be rich, healthy farmland, or quivering in the throes of death brought on by pesticide. Some have even made it into gardens of homes in the region's main city, Valladolid, according to news reports.
"There has never been a plague like the one we have now," said the Castille-Leon regional agriculture minister, Silvia Clemente. Officials have asked agronomists, veterinarians and biologists what on earth is happening and nobody really knows, she told Cadena Ser radio.
"There are no measures that have been proven to work against a plague of these characteristics," Clemente said.
For now, crews are fighting with fire. They started igniting controlled blazes today on previously harvested farmland to try to kill off the pests, acting with utmost care to keep the flames from spreading to bone dry terrain prone to forest fires.
The extermination bid began in Valladolid, the province hardest hit, and will gradually spread to others in coming days.
Jose Antonio del Brio, head of the local farmers' association in the town of Fresno el Viejo, where the first fires were set, said literally every farm in the area is being eaten by voles. First it was the grain crops - 40 per cent lost to them - and now beets, potatoes and corn are on the menu.
"We cannot do anything against these animals, who are taking food out of our children's mouths," del Brio said.
A vole problem was first detected in Castille-Leon in September of last year. Then, officials used chemicals to try to kill them off, but ecological groups filed a complaint and the campaign was halted. The vole population suddenly exploded.
"Nothing of what is happening with this plague falls within the expected because there are no precedents," Clemente said.
AP
