Disturbing footage has emerged of hoards of mice scurrying across farms in Western and South Australia. <\/p>\n
The footage shared by farmers in several parts of Australia showed swarms of the vermin scurrying around silos and across crops. <\/p>\n
Some farmers were being driven to extreme measures to control the mouse plague, including shooting the rodents with rifles or setting fire to precious crops to start anew. <\/p>\n
Steve Henry from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said the overrun farms were “well above plague levels”. <\/p>\n
Mice populations reach plague levels when there are more than 800 rodents per hectare.<\/p>\n
“When we see a plague, it\u2019s more like a whole lot of satellite populations growing and growing until they all join up,” Henry added. <\/p>\n
The researcher was no stranger to Australian mouse plagues, with the scenes reminiscent of the last major mouse plague in 2021. <\/p>\n
In 2020 and 2021, rodent populations in NSW reached plague levels triggering a devastating agricultural crisis and causing an estimated $1 billion in damages.<\/p>\n
The ideal breeding conditions and rise in mouse populations threatened farmers already hit by fuel price increases and fertiliser shortages. <\/p>\n
Andrew Weidemann from Grain Producers Australia said the most recent hoards were “another kick in the guts”. <\/p>\n
“Not only are farmers impacted, it\u2019s the community, it\u2019s anybody. It\u2019s the small business, it\u2019s the supermarkets, it\u2019s the baker,” he told 9News. <\/p>\n
Pockets of the plague were threatening up to $3 billion worth of exports, 9News reported, while recent rainfall in other areas is seeing mouse populations rise. <\/p>\n
An emergency application was now before the federal chemical regulator to potentially double the dose of the lethal ingredient in bait from 25 to 50 grams. <\/p>\n
“Our research shows that with the 50g bait you kill over 80% of the mice, 80% of the time,” Henry said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Disturbing footage has emerged of hoards of mice scurrying across farms in Western and South Australia. The footage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[50,85,14934,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-401292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-farming","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}