Panic: unprecedented mouse plague has invaded Australia

Overnight, garage floors disappear under running mouse pads. The ceilings come to life with the sound of stripes. One family blamed mice who chewed electrical wires for the fire in their house.

Large tracts of land in the state of New South Wales, Australia, they are threatened by a plague of mice that the state government considers “absolutely unprecedented”. It is not known how many millions of rodents have infested the state’s agricultural plains.

“Now we’re at a critical point where, if we don’t significantly reduce the number of mice which already have pest proportions for the spring, we will face an absolute economic and social crisis in the rural area and in parts of New South Wales ”, assured the Minister of Agriculture, Adam Marshall .

Bruce barnes He warned he was taking a risk by planting crops on his family’s farm near the town of Bogan Gate in central New South Wales. “We are content to sow and we keep hope”, he pointed out. The risk is that the mice will maintain their numbers during the southern hemisphere winter, devouring wheat, barley and canola before they can be harvested.

NSW Farmers, the most important agricultural association in the state, predicted that the plague would take more than A $ 1 billion ($ 775 million) from the value of winter crops.

The state government has asked India to send 5,000 liters of the banned poison Bromadiolone. The federal government regulator has not yet authorized its emergency use in the perimeter of the fields. Critics fear that the poison will not only kill mice, but also the animals that feed on it.including bold eagles and family pets.

“We have to go this route because we need something super powerful, the equivalent of napalm, to totally kill these mice,” Marshall said. Plague deals cruel blow to farmers in Australia’s most populous state, which in recent years have been hit by fires, floods and pandemic disturbances, now to deal with the plague of the house mouse, or Mouse muscle, which is not endemic to the country. The worst comes at night, when millions of mice that were resting hidden during the day come into action.

Farmer Colin Tink estimates he drowned 7,500 in a single night last week in a trap he set with a tank for feeding cattle that was filled with water on his farm on the outskirts of Dubbo town. “I thought I could catch around 200. I didn’t think I could catch 7500”Tink assured.

Barnes said mouse carcasses and rooftop droppings contaminated farmers’ water tanks. “People get sick from drinking water”, he concludes.

El Mercurio (Chile)