A local government near Dongting Lake in central China's Hunan Province plans to build a 40-km wall to
prevent further invasion by rats.
Lujiao Township in Yueyang City, northern Hubei, is ready to shell out 6 million yuan
(US$792,000) to build the one-meter-high ratproof wall.
"Rats may invade again as the water level in Dongting keeps
rising," said Zuo Shigeng, head of the Yueyang Plant Protection
Bureau.
Experts estimate 10 million hectares of crops could be devoured
by rats if no effective measures are taken.
Building walls and digging ditches are the main ways to keep the
rodents out, but many localities do not have the funds to build
them, said Wu Chenghe, a local official in Yiyang, another city
troubled by a rat infestation.
The provincial government has allocated 8 million yuan (US$1.05
million) to repair ratproof walls.
Poison has also been widely used to kill the rats but has
already had side effects. In Binhu village of Lujiao township,
about one thousand cats died after eating rats killed by
poison.
The rat plague began on June 23 and an estimated 2 billion rats
have invaded 22 counties surrounding Dongting Lake after their
homes on islands in the lake were flooded, causing over 6 million
yuan in losses.
More than 2.25 million rats -- about 90 tons of rodent -- have
been killed since June 21 in Yiyang, local authorities said.
Ecological damage due to intense human activity in the lake area
was a factor in the rat invasion, said Zhang Chen, an official of
the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Rats moved to the center of Dongting Lake in the past few years
and began to breed there, with more islets appearing as water
levels fell. When the floods came they were forced to swim to
land.
The decreasing number of the rat's natural enemies -- such as
snakes and owls -- was also blamed for the rat invasion, according
to Zhang.
(Xinhua News Agency July 14, 2007)