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A combination of an increase in construction and chilly weather has increased the amount of vermin in and around Sydney, Australia. There's no use trying to ask them nicely to leave, they are here to stay. Now the council is stepping up to deal with the problem head on by doubling down on control measures and engaging residents and businesses to help push down the infesting population. This problem is not new with Sydney dealing with this type of problem year in year out. Businesses are advised to take care how they dispose of food and residents should take precautions to ensure unwanted pests don't bed down with them in hidden places.
Good advice.
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Rats Infest Sydney Triggering Plans to Eradicate Them
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If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by istartedi on Thursday July 25 2019, @04:54PM (6 children)
I've never heard of a city being successfully cleared. I used to deal with rats in DC, and it was a lost cause. I've heard that in Alberta, Canada they successfully stopped rats from spreading across the province but that's different. I think they stopped them from crossing rural areas by getting a relatively small number of farmers to take the problem seriously. The harsh winters probably help too.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by richtopia on Thursday July 25 2019, @05:35PM (1 child)
It is very difficult to hit complete eradication, but there are some examples. Typically remote islands so the influx of rats can be controlled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat#Rat-free_areas [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaksea_Island_(New_Zealand)#Rat_eradication [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday July 25 2019, @08:16PM
New Zealand spends an awful lot of time and effort on eradicating mammalian pests from islands, as there were no native land mammals until people brought them here starting about 800 years ago.
Birds and insects evolved to take the ecological niches that mammals take in other places but can't compete with fast breeding mammals, especially mice and rats.
I have read that something like 90% of kiwi chicks don't survive their first year in the presence of rats and possums in particular, but if they do they are big enough to defend themselves.
There are videos on Youtube of kiwis kicking the crap out of possums that enter their burrows, which is a sight to gladden the heart.
This Island is an example of an eradication programme [wikipedia.org] although it is not entirely accurate. I knew an old fellow who volunteered to help in the 1970's and he told me there were so many cats that they shot dozens the first summer they went over.
I hope these buggers are doing alright now, [wikipedia.org] as they're amazing. Mouse sized crickets.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 25 2019, @06:58PM
Rats infested Hamelin, Lower Saxony, Germany in 1284.
A piper appeared dressed in a coat of many bright colors.
The piper contracted with the townspeople to eliminate the rat infestation.
After successfull removal of the rat infestation, the townspeople of Hamelin were in breach of contract due to nonpayment.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday July 26 2019, @05:43AM (1 child)
The word "eradicate" is someone's fantasy. All you can do is keep the rat population within some reasonable bounds. Even that is difficult: you don't really want to spread poison all over your city.
Rats are, unfortunately, very clever and very determined critters. You know those closed waste bins made of heavy plastic? Rats can chew right through the bottoms, to get at the refuse. Drywall? Chew a hole through it to get inside.
Terriers are ratters. So you need lots of hungry, feral terriers. That's surely the solution...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday July 26 2019, @05:03PM
In the course of my struggle, I learned that rat dogs were historically used in London. Of course they weren't feral, but trained by handlers. When you suggest putting these dogs back to work in places like DC though, it offends modern sensibility. OTOH, people are perfectly willing to put their food scraps in plastic bags in the alley. The rats in DC don't even have to try. What a life for them. I'd go back there, and the bags would literally be wriggling with rats feeding in them.
Before you solve the rat problem, you have to solve the people problem.
Those bait stations didn't work at all. The rats figure out it means death. Why would you want a dry pellet of death when you've got bones with half an ounce of prime meat still clinging to them? They move in to empty bait stations--I observed it when I had our front flower bed cleaned out. That caused me to come up with a "modest proposal". Since homeless people are dying on the streets, and rats are prospering, we need to change our strategy. The government should embark on a program to poison the homeless and house the rats.
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(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday July 26 2019, @10:56PM
If eradication is possible anywhere it would be in Australian cities. The native "bush rat" [wikipedia.org] has stopped the spread of introduced rats into wilderness areas (as has happened in New Zealand where no native rodents exist). The bush rat outcompetes introduced rats, but can't survive in open habitat as it exposes them to predation by cats and foxes. Currently research [sydney.edu.au] is underway to see if reestablishing bush rat populations in certain areas can be a cost effective method for completely denying access to the introduced rats.