Chinese authorities are feeding contraceptive-laced bait to a wild rodent species that is a known carrier of the bubonic plague, Xinhua reported last week.
The massive population explosion of wild gerbils in the northwestern province of Xinjiang is causing havoc with the environment as well as agriculture, worsening the effect of desertification.
Great gerbils are also carriers of the yersinia pestis bacteria, the cause of bubonic plague, and are common in several central Asian countries
Authorities have been placing bran-like pellets containing a drug that causes infertility near the entrances of the mammals’ extensive burrows in the Gurbantunggut desert since last May.
“Besides pregnancy prevention, the drug can induce abortion, and thus largely reduce their breeding rate,” said Du Yuefei, head of the Changji city epidemic prevention.
“It’s a good way to tackle the desert plague,” he told Xinhua.
The drug, which has been spread across 49,000 hectares (121,000 acres), has “little effect” on other animals, according to the report.
Gerbils horde massive amounts of grass in their complex burrows and cause damage to root systems, according to Xinhua.
A 2004 study in neighbouring Kazakhstan of the same species of gerbil, whose latin name is rhombomys opimus, found that bubonic plague outbreaks could be predicted by the rise and fall of wild populations.
"We found a fairly simple pattern - if the population of gerbils increases in density, when they reach a certain level, two years after that plague appears," Herwig Leirs of the University of Antwerp was quoted as saying in New Scientist magazine.
Leirs drew on data that had been meticulously collected by soviet scientists during the cold war era. Western powers had feared that the USSR would use the information for biological warfare, New Scientist reported.
Gerbils are effective carriers because they can transmit the plague without being affected by it.
"If a population is dense enough then the disease can persist because there is frequent contact between infected and susceptible individuals," Leirs told New Scientist.
The bubonic plague is endemic in several countries and China reported 519 cases to the World Health Organization between the years of 1989 and 2003, with 52 of them fatal.
The gerbil explosion in Xinjiang was last reported in 2003, when the Chinese government introduced a scheme using
predatory birds to control the desert rodents.
Changji City installed 300 perches for owls and eagles, Meng Jijin, an official in desert administration told Xinhua.
It was the worst rodent disaster in Xinjiang in 10 years, according to Xiong Ling, a local pest control official.
Massive networks of burrows had destroyed more than four million hectares (11 million acres) of praries, the BBC reported
The latest report in the Chinese state media makes no mention of the previous campaign and it is not clear how successful the predatory birds were.
In the meantime sterilizing the rodents could damage ecosystems, experts told the Guardian newspaper.
"That the pellets have 'little effect' is highly debatable," a conservationist told the British newspaper anonymously.
"All drugs have an effect when put into the system, on other rodents, on birds of prey that eat the rodents and so forth."
They also warn that that culling gerbils could harm other animals in the food chain including bears, eagles and leopards.
A similar but unrelated grassland mammal, the Pika, has been subject to poisoning by the Chinese government since 1958, the China Daily reported in 2004.
The round-eared, whiskered mammals cause the same kind of rampant damage to plateau grasslands as the gerbils.
But the campaign to poison them has been challenged by ecologists who say the species helps to maintain biodiversity.
"When you see the black-eared kites, the area probably has not been poisoned. Contrarily, if there is nothing in the sky, you can tell the pikas are not there any more," US biologist Andrew Smith told students at Peking University in 2004.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
What is Animalian?
Animalian is a blog dedicated to animals in the news. But really, it’s about people.
Everything we write about animals is about humans. It tells you about human interests, aspirations and behaviour.
As far as we know so far, humans are the species that have modified this planet more than any other, and our impact has affected just about every other animal we find here.
There are still new discoveries in remote places, but as soon as we find them, we’ve already changed them. And as soon as they are named, catalogued, and studied, they have entered our story.
But then there is another side of it.
In terms of biomass, we’re not that significant. There is some statistic about how insect biomass dwarfs human flesh on this planet, but the numbers do not matter.
The point is that there is a hell of a lot of wildlife out there that is autonomous of our existence, some of it a lot closer to you than you would think.
Our presence may have modified it, but that does not equate to control. We are also formed, constrained and modified by the wildlife that surrounds us.
So everything we discover about life beyond humanity tells us something more about the world that forms us. And as our world changes, so do we.
How does Animalian report?
We mainly report on animal news items that have hit the mainstream press. We are not a science or environmental blog, we are looking at the stories that gain general interest.
On every story we cover, we will pool information from several reliable media sources and offer our own version.
We will also report on animal news in specialist publications that we think should have been picked up by the mainstream.
Mudskipper
Everything we write about animals is about humans. It tells you about human interests, aspirations and behaviour.
As far as we know so far, humans are the species that have modified this planet more than any other, and our impact has affected just about every other animal we find here.
There are still new discoveries in remote places, but as soon as we find them, we’ve already changed them. And as soon as they are named, catalogued, and studied, they have entered our story.
But then there is another side of it.
In terms of biomass, we’re not that significant. There is some statistic about how insect biomass dwarfs human flesh on this planet, but the numbers do not matter.
The point is that there is a hell of a lot of wildlife out there that is autonomous of our existence, some of it a lot closer to you than you would think.
Our presence may have modified it, but that does not equate to control. We are also formed, constrained and modified by the wildlife that surrounds us.
So everything we discover about life beyond humanity tells us something more about the world that forms us. And as our world changes, so do we.
How does Animalian report?
We mainly report on animal news items that have hit the mainstream press. We are not a science or environmental blog, we are looking at the stories that gain general interest.
On every story we cover, we will pool information from several reliable media sources and offer our own version.
We will also report on animal news in specialist publications that we think should have been picked up by the mainstream.
Mudskipper
More funding earmarked to combat British bee devastation
The British government will provide more money for research into bee diseases, in a belated effort to tackle alarming falls in their populations, the BBC reported this week.
A senior civil servant admitted that that issue hadn’t been given the priority it should have had, but now there would be a “significant extra boost” of cash in a bid to save the insects that play a pivotal part in the agricultural economy.
“In a sense I am admitting we had not given this the high priority we should have done,” Dame Helen Ghosh of the environment food and rural affairs department (Defra) told a parliamentary committee.
Now the government will provide 500,000 pounds ($724,000) a year extra for research, husbandry and disease control, according to the BBC.
This comes after a long running debate into declining bee populations in Britain where it is feared that disease could eventually wipe out the industrious insects.
Bees help to pollinate 39 commercial crops in Britain and are worth an estimated 200 million pounds ($290 million) a year to the economy, according to Labour MP Don Touhig.
More than a year earlier Environment and rural affairs minister Lord Rooker had warned, “bee health is at risk and frankly, if nothing is done about it, the fact is the honey bee population could be wiped out in 10 years.”
There are a number of different disease threats to the bee population of the island nation, but the one that stands out is the varroa mite that arrived in the UK in 1992, according to the BBC.
The tiny parasite that latches onto bees and sucks their “blood” had nearly wiped out the wild honeybee population and was eating into the managed hives.
Across the Atlantic in the United States, a mysterious phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder has killed off about a third of commercial hives in the past two years, Ron Spears, a Californian beekeeper was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
The fear in Britain is that this little-understood blight that causes whole hives to be left deserted may traverse the ocean.
“If it did arrive we don’t know how to tackle it,” Ivor Davis an amateur beekeeper told the BBC.
Some have blamed Britain’s thousands of amateur enthusiasts for making it difficult to control diseases in bee populations.
An army of 20,000 hobby-keepers are threatening the survival of the honeybees, The Times reported in early March.
The newspaper cited a National Audit Office (NAO) report that recommends all amateur beekeepers join a national register to make it easer to train beekeepers to spot parasites and prevent viral outbreaks.
About 30 percent of colonies were devastated during the 2007-08 winter, according to The Times.
However, journalist and amateur beekeeper Alison Benjamin hit back at accusers and called for more funding for research.
“All the beekeepers I’ve met since taking up this hobby three years ago care deeply about their bees,” she wrote in the Guardian newspaper.
“Why would they fail to take precautionary measures against the bees’ assailant?”
She says that most beekeepers are well aware of parasites such as the varroa mite.
“You can spot the tiny brown dot on the bees, or more easily on the white larvae. Feeding your bees a natural jelly-like substance made from thymol in the autumn is the best protection.”
It doesn’t make sense to attack the people who have an interest in keeping bees alive, Benjamin points out.
“The truth is the jury’s still out on what is killing our bees. What about the role of pesticides? The European parliament and the Co-op supermarket think there is enough of a case against bee-toxic chemicals to ban some of them. What we need is more funding for research in this area.”
A senior civil servant admitted that that issue hadn’t been given the priority it should have had, but now there would be a “significant extra boost” of cash in a bid to save the insects that play a pivotal part in the agricultural economy.
“In a sense I am admitting we had not given this the high priority we should have done,” Dame Helen Ghosh of the environment food and rural affairs department (Defra) told a parliamentary committee.
Now the government will provide 500,000 pounds ($724,000) a year extra for research, husbandry and disease control, according to the BBC.
This comes after a long running debate into declining bee populations in Britain where it is feared that disease could eventually wipe out the industrious insects.
Bees help to pollinate 39 commercial crops in Britain and are worth an estimated 200 million pounds ($290 million) a year to the economy, according to Labour MP Don Touhig.
More than a year earlier Environment and rural affairs minister Lord Rooker had warned, “bee health is at risk and frankly, if nothing is done about it, the fact is the honey bee population could be wiped out in 10 years.”
There are a number of different disease threats to the bee population of the island nation, but the one that stands out is the varroa mite that arrived in the UK in 1992, according to the BBC.
The tiny parasite that latches onto bees and sucks their “blood” had nearly wiped out the wild honeybee population and was eating into the managed hives.
Across the Atlantic in the United States, a mysterious phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder has killed off about a third of commercial hives in the past two years, Ron Spears, a Californian beekeeper was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
The fear in Britain is that this little-understood blight that causes whole hives to be left deserted may traverse the ocean.
“If it did arrive we don’t know how to tackle it,” Ivor Davis an amateur beekeeper told the BBC.
Some have blamed Britain’s thousands of amateur enthusiasts for making it difficult to control diseases in bee populations.
An army of 20,000 hobby-keepers are threatening the survival of the honeybees, The Times reported in early March.
The newspaper cited a National Audit Office (NAO) report that recommends all amateur beekeepers join a national register to make it easer to train beekeepers to spot parasites and prevent viral outbreaks.
About 30 percent of colonies were devastated during the 2007-08 winter, according to The Times.
However, journalist and amateur beekeeper Alison Benjamin hit back at accusers and called for more funding for research.
“All the beekeepers I’ve met since taking up this hobby three years ago care deeply about their bees,” she wrote in the Guardian newspaper.
“Why would they fail to take precautionary measures against the bees’ assailant?”
She says that most beekeepers are well aware of parasites such as the varroa mite.
“You can spot the tiny brown dot on the bees, or more easily on the white larvae. Feeding your bees a natural jelly-like substance made from thymol in the autumn is the best protection.”
It doesn’t make sense to attack the people who have an interest in keeping bees alive, Benjamin points out.
“The truth is the jury’s still out on what is killing our bees. What about the role of pesticides? The European parliament and the Co-op supermarket think there is enough of a case against bee-toxic chemicals to ban some of them. What we need is more funding for research in this area.”
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