Thread: Plagues of Rats and Mice

I think the warming of the seasons is having a definite impact. More seed and more food more often and milder conditions means more pests and greater survival of their young to breed again too. And more extreme population events. One of the better documented impacts of ship rats was a small island in the southern ocean. Rats arrived there in the sixties and within five years had exploded and some bird species extinct there within that time frame and all birds heavily depleted. Scary stuff. Rodents leave no stone unturned when it comes to the quest for food. From underground to the tree tops. And kill out of all proportion to their size. Remember recently the reports of mice killing petrel chicks in their burrows? I kept mice as a kid. Gestation of three weeks, litter size around ten and sexually mature at a month old. Do the maths on that!! Compare that to a gecko that has one to two young per year and is sexually mature at four years old. A big rodent event can take many many years to recover from. And that is without mentioning female stoats that can carry sperm from when they were mated as a kitten then release it as soon as rodent numbers go up. New Zealand has some huge challenges in front of them. I wish DOC and hunters could work better together for pest control projects. DOC is really missing out there. There is plenty of money in the hunting industry but hunters are way too wary of being used and abused. There can be such a win win in my opinion.