by Vu Kim Chung
30-6-2001
Vietnam's capital was under threat from an army of giant rats that officials said had seriously damaged the city's flood-protection dyke system ahead of the wet season. A 2.3 km section of a dyke protecting low-lying Hanoi from the Red River, rehabilitated with the assistance of a consortium of international engineers from Experco, ECI, and Klohn Crippen Consultants under the aegis of the Asian Development Bank-financed Irrigation and Flood Protection Rehabilitation Project, had become a "rat castle", where the rats had dug in after an intense, but failed, eradication campaign.
Hoang Van Huong, a commune official at Dong My on the southern outskirts of the capital, confirmed the reports, saying the rodents had severely damaged the dyke by building underground nests from which they raided nearby rice fields. Mr Huong said surviving rodents moved to the dyke after locals eliminated about 45,000 animals in a government-sponsored 12-month offensive offering about 500 dong (1 US Dollar = 14,880 Vietnamese Dong) a tail, which is a lot of money for the average Vietnamese person. He said the survivors had bred quickly and now numbered in the tens of thousands, with many weighing in at more than 2kg.
"There are literally thousands of nests undermining the dyke and many of the rats are so big, even our cats are afraid of them," he said. "They are very clever animals and have learned to identify our traps and poison. They also know that the law prevents us from interfering with the dyke, so that is where they have built their homes."
Irrigation official Hoang Van Uoc said authorities faced a dilemma as water levels in the Red River were already rising fast ahead of heavy rains that usually hit northern Vietnam in July, August and September.
"We can't repair the dyke until water levels fall sufficiently, and that will not be until October at least," he said. "Until then, we will just have to step up efforts to catch the rats in the fields."
Rat plagues have become an increasingly serious problem in rural Vietnam, with some areas reportedly losing 15 per cent of agricultural production to the voracious creatures. According to Ministry of Agriculture figures, rats destroyed more than 700,000 hectares of rice crops in 2000, nearly treble the losses in 1996.
Conservationists attribute the rise in rat numbers to the near extinction of natural predators, in particular the killing of snakes, which fetch big money from the illegal wildlife trade in Vietnam and China. But some regions have adapted to the scourge by selling rat meat for human consumption, as in Thailand where in Bangkok at times up to 50% of meat sold for chicken, even in expensive international hotels is in fact rural, grade A, grain (rice)-fed rat meat.