Me, the annoying lord of the prairies | EUROtoday
Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
DIn the Massif Central, I’m referred to as “mole rat”, within the Jura, “mouse” and in Ain, “mouse”. I’m neither a mole, nor a rat, nor a discipline mouse, nor a mouse. I’m the bottom vole, of the species Arvicola terrestrisafter the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné (1707-1778). My coat of a reasonably, inimitable reddish brown, beige-gray beneath, my rounded muzzle, my curvy silhouette, my small eyes, my skinny ears, my tail shorter than that of a rat, with out forgetting my vegetarian weight loss plan, make me a rodent in its personal proper.
Moist inexperienced meadows, orchards and gardens are my kingdom. Winter and summer time, you’re certain to search out me. This is my pantry. Without a lot effort, I discover all of the meals that my insatiable abdomen calls for: roots, ideally fleshy, corresponding to dandelions, legumes, bulbs and rhizomes, but additionally clover and alfalfa.
Like a sumo, I swallow my weight
With people, we share sure traits. Like him, I scratch the earth with ardor. Like him, I’m able to felling bushes, because of my very lengthy and curved incisors worthy of a beaver. Finally, to guard myself, I construct buildings, like constructing bars underground, which function shelter, attic and place of replica.
ALSO READ Ground vole: the invasion that worries the countryside
I’m cute as hell, however the breeders choose to have a photograph of me than boarding on their territory. Every day, like a sumo wrestler, I devour my weight (from 80 to 200 g) in crops, with out ever ingesting a drop of water. I assault crops by the foundation, from the depths of the Earth the place I dwell, sheltered from gentle, in underground galleries with a number of ramifications to guard myself from pure and human predators.
Every 12 months, it is a child growth six toes beneath
I’m a glutton but additionally an excellent fornicator. Every 12 months, there is a child growth six toes beneath. In one 12 months, my feminine and I can produce offspring of round 100 offspring. All pushed by the identical ogre urge for food. During our proliferation cycle – lasting 5 to six years – we are able to exceed a thousand people per hectare.
ALSO READ A shelter for abused cattle
No marvel that farmers see us as a plague of the Holy Scripturesspreading ailments, decimating crops and pastures, disrupting livestock techniques, disrupting flora. I do not dwell lengthy, six months to a 12 months, simply lengthy sufficient to trigger discord. In a couple of weeks, I rework a lovingly formed agricultural panorama into black earth of desolation. In winter, I wreak actual carnage within the orchards, weakening the fruit bushes, which, on the slightest gust of wind, topple over.
In June, my testicles attain their most weight
My tribe is born and reproduces from spring to fall. Some say {that a} gentle winter is conducive to our proliferation. Indeed, in the course of the low season, if the climate is nice, as quickly as a blade of grass comes up, I eat, I achieve energy and I reproduce. But if a frost comes later, the survival of my fragile and demanding little ones will not be assured.
This exhausts the adults and limits our abundance of multiplication. Curiously, in response to scientific literature, the extra extreme the winter, the upper our outbreaks attain. For what ? In winter, adults cease reproducing, save their energy, and look ahead to spring, the perfect season to restart the cycle on the most favorable time.
ALSO READ 50 years in the past, the beaver was reintroduced in France
According to INRAE, in June, my testicles attain their most weight (round 350 mg), which drops till January (30 mg). Same commentary in females, for the load of the uterus. In the autumn, there are very many people. But density stress, mixed with illness, causes colony collapse. The survivors dangle on in a court docket of miracles ambiance.
The extra homogeneous the panorama, the extra dispersed we change into
Like many different rodents, we have now at all times proliferated, particularly domestically. But from 1970, we unfold within the type of massive regional waves, first in Franche-Comté, then within the Massif Central. According to science, this proliferation is the syndrome of the boundaries of the post-war agricultural mannequin.
Specialization in rising grass to supply milk and meat elevated the quantity of meals obtainable, made landscapes extra uniform, and facilitated the connection between grasslands, creating an open ecosystem unfavorable for exploration. area by predators. The extra homogeneous and fewer fragmented the panorama, the extra we disperse and colonize new meadows.
With every disaster, tensions are reignited
A gaggle of researchers and agricultural technicians labored on a reasoned management program to comprise the circulate (hedges, groves, plowing, birds of prey and foxes) and restore happiness within the meadow. But not everyone seems to be concerned. The farmer typically sees me as an anomaly, a contaminating entity within the agricultural panorama.
Helpless, he waits for the perlimpinpin powder to annihilate me, for the reason that ban on bromadiolone (May 2021), a poisonous anticoagulant with deleterious results on non-target fauna. He is searching for a scapegoat. It is the fault of science which isn’t shifting ahead. Tired of setting traps that take a very long time, some think about that we are going to rent long-term unemployed individuals to hold out chemical management. Others, confronted with their devastated discipline, determined to do nothing extra, neither remedy nor trapping. I thank them for that.
ALSO READ The cat, this invasive species that threatens biodiversity
With every disaster, tensions are reignited. The press falls into the entice, echoing “country enemy number 1”, the “terrible peak of proliferation”, “a ravaged land”, the “scourge”, the “cry of alarm of a breeder”. All this in order that hysterical individuals can come collectively and discover fast options. Boiling scorching even.
Party and get drunk
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
Science has its eye on me. In 2021, researchers from VetAgro Sup Clermont-Ferrand launched a “campascope” into our roommate. This movement detector digicam highlighted our urge for food for dandelions and chicory, and our aversion to different crops (rye, corn). This discovery may assist information the set up of our colonies in relation to the flora. Agricultural organizations try to impose household planning on me.
Research carried out at Blaise-Pascal University in Clermont-Ferrand has found a technique of immuno-contraception utilizing a vaccine ingested in a single dose on bait, which blocks the fertilization of voles. An answer that smacks of the chemical agriculture of the Thirty Glorious Years. But I do not fear. It will nonetheless take years earlier than shifting to the sector, with no certainty of success. That will not cease us, till then, from partying and having a blast. Happy holidays everybody – underground, life is gorgeous!
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/moi-le-seigneur-emmerdeur-des-prairies-22-12-2024-2578530_23.php