The gigantic Three Gorges Dam project and global warming could be to blame
for the recent rodent outbreak in
Central China's Hunan Province.
The rodent scourge surrounding Dongting Lake, China's
second-largest freshwater lake, had been for the most part controlled. In a
recent two-week mouse offensive, residents of the 22 counties encircling the
lake eradicated some 2.3 million of the estimated 2 billion rodents.
The
rodents were driven out into populated areas when floodwaters burst out in late
June. Shi Dazhao, director of the Chinese Agricultural University's
laboratory on the prevention and control of rodents, and a consultant to the
Chinese Association for the Control of Rodents and Sanitary Insects (CPCA),
attributed the magnitude of this year's rat pest problem to the gigantic dam
project and global warming.
His assessment was partially echoed by Wu
Chenghe, chief of the plantation protection station for Datong Lake, a sub-lake
of Dongting Lake. Wu argued that interception of the upper watershed had lowered
water levels and created ideal conditions for a rodent outbreak.
The
fact that water levels did not rise during last year's flood season also helped
boost rat numbers, he said.
But while the media have called it the
region's most severe rat infestation in the past decade, Deng Zhi, a senior
researcher with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, told China Daily that
rodent outbreaks were a natural event during flood seasons.
"Running for
their lives, the rodents always come and go during flood seasons and there's
hardly a way to stop them," he said. The root cause of this year's particularly
massive rat attack was ongoing human polderization, he added.
"Polderization
violates the laws of ecology," he said.
"It not only facilitates floods,
but also creates an ideal condition for rodent reproduction."
Another
reason is nearby counties' reliance on reeds for paper production, and a source of food
of rodents.
"The more reeds people grow, the more rodents and paper
factories there are, the more pollution there is, and the more serious the rat
problem becomes," Yang Hualin, director of the CPCA, said.
Experts
believe Hunan's rat control campaign was tricky to solve.
Shi said:
"It's not that we can't kill all the rodents, but that it's not worth doing.
Just how much money, time and effort ought the government spend in trying to
protect each hectare of farmland?
"But if we were to let the rats run
wild, the crops would be ruined. And if we were to truly resolve the issue
through lake restoration, where should all the surrounding residents be
relocated and how will they live?" Shi proposed several immediate and long-term
solutions to the problem. For instance, the government should try to control
rodent reproduction before each summer flood, and peasants should avoid growing
crops during the period.
Monitoring stations with an organized and
trained workforce should also be established immediately, because "prevention is
key to everything", he said.
In the long run, coordinated development
and supervision at all levels for a national preventive scheme was a must, he
said, adding that a disease prevention fund may be useful.
The Ministry
of Health launched its first strategic national scheme on the prevention and
control of emerging infectious diseases on June 20. But a comprehensive project
to facilitate inter-departmental prevention and control efforts was still
unavailable.
(China Daily 07/16/2007 page 3)
Vocabulary:
rodent:啮齿动物
scourge:灾害
polderization:围湖(海)造田
reed:芦苇
Questions:
1. How many rodents were killed in the
recent "mouse offensive"?
2. What factors have contributed to the recent
rodent scourge?
3. What did Shi say is "key to everything"?
Answers:
1. 2.3 million.
2. Global warming and construction of the Three Gorges
Dam.
3. Prevention of rodent outbreaks.
(英语点津 Linda 编辑)
About the broadcaster:
Matt Doran is an award-winning American newspaper journalist and an
undergraduate student at Albion College. He is currently a polisher for China
Daily Website and is on summer break from Beijing Foreign Studies University,
where he will resume his study of Chinese in the fall.