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Spain battles rodent plague
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August 9, 2007
It'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.
more
[link to www.smh.com.au]
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