Mice-infested Bulgarian region seeks Pied Piper

Link : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041105/80/f61mf.html


SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria has declared a state of disaster around its Black Sea port of Bourgas because of an infestation of millions of mice.


Officials said a combination of damp weather, a bumper harvest and new farming techniques had touched off the biggest explosion in the region's mouse population for a decade.


Between 100 and 150 million of the rodents are estimated to be in the region and are multiplying rapidly, officials said.


"We have declared a state of disaster in the region ... This is the highest level seen in 10 years," said Liliana Vassileva, head of the Bourgas Agricultural Protection Agency.


Specialists say the hordes of hungry rodents could damage next year's crops by chomping their way through seeds planted out for the winter. There is also a danger they could spread disease.


Officials in Bourgas, 400 km (249 miles) east of the capital Sofia, said it needed 15 million levs to poison the rodents and had asked the government for help.


"Mouse invasion endangers Bourgas!" said the Web site for Bourgas Port, next to a drawing of a plump rodent.


Government agronomist Margarita Yaneva said other regions in Bulgaria were suffering from a similar plague. "Some years are just favourable for pests," she said. "Older people call this phenomenon 'The Year of the Mouse'."


The explosion in the rodent population was caused mainly by farmers ploughing at levels too shallow to break up mouse nests, Vassileva said.


Other facts were the wet weather -- conditions mice find conducive for reproduction -- and the bumper food supply created by this summer's record harvest.


Normally, farmers in Bulgaria just torch their fields to kill the pests, though the practice is illegal. But many fear doing so in Bourgas could pose a danger to the nearby LUKOIL Neftochim refinery.