Escaped Tasmanian rats threaten area fruit farms
Moorpark Zoo officials working with local federal agencies to capture the non-endemic species
By Chase D. Newman 04/01/2010
Roughly two dozen Tasmanian rats escaped from the mammal holding area of the Moorpark Zoo earlier this week.
Lori Bennet, dean of Moorpark College Zoo, said the animals’ whereabouts remain a mystery and that all efforts to find and capture the potentially harmful non-endemic species are being pursued. She stated that the voracious animals had somehow chewed through the 50-gauge steel wire of the holding pen with their doglike canine teeth and horselike molars.
The Wildlife Hazard Apprehension Team (WHAT), an inter-agency coalition, has now been thrust into the limelight in this very real and daunting challenge. The team, a joint venture between the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, the Ventura County Animal Control Regulation Department and the Federal Non-Endemic Species Eradication Organization, has only been in existence for about three years. The last non-endemic species that they conjointly worked on eradicating were the Mediterranean fruit fly and mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus.
Monica Nolan, director of the county’s animal regulation agency, aimed to reassure the public in a press conference at Moorpark College on Monday. She stated, “These Tasmanian rats are not your common restaurant rats and should be treated with extreme caution.”
She also expressed her absolute faith in WHAT and felt confident that WHAT would get the job done with minimal harm to the county’s citrus and strawberry crops.
In the rats’ native habitat on the island of Tasmania, they have evolved in such a way that they have become the island’s dominant predator. With no natural predators of their own and an abundant fruit and meat supply, they have achieved a stunning size for a rodent. (Adults average about 110 to 120 pounds.)
Not only are they massive animals (slightly smaller than South America’s capybara), but they exhibit the same jumping characteristics as the kangaroo, wallaby and kangaroo rat. Equipped with powerful hind legs that easily propel them over objects 7 or 8 feet tall, fences really present no barrier to these voracious omnivores.
According to witnesses, they have been observed jumping across streams and arroyos that are 30 feet across. They have also been clocked on the open pampas of Tasmania at about 65 km/h (40 mph). These attributes, combined with their “rabbitlike mating,” make them a formidable threat to local farmers.
In Tasmania, they have been known to decimate entire crops of crab apples (a particular dry type of apple that grows in large bushes and thickets rather than trees).
Shamus McGee, a crab apple farmer in Tasmania, says, “Aye, the bloody little bastards seem to get through anything. Methinks I now gotta use electric fences and moats to keep them bedeviled freaks out.”
They have been destroying grape orchards, apricot farms and blueberry farms as well, according to local officials.
Brenda Woodhouse, chair of wildlife education at Moorpark College, says she has been working around the clock with local officials and farmers, trying to educate them on how to protect their crops and who to contact if a Tasmanian rat is encountered. WHAT is working with the government of Tasmania to arrange for several hundred traps to be air-shipped to California for a worst-case scenario event.
The damage from these large jumping rodents is already being observed.
A spokesman for Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark stated that large clumps of blackberries and blueberries went missing virtually overnight. This concern was also echoed by several strawberry farms in the Oxnard area.
Nancy Lindholm, president and CEO of the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce, stated that Oxnard is receiving scattered reports of damaged crops, but that it is too early to tell if the damage is being caused by the escaped Tasmanian rats.
What we do know, she stated, is that WHAT is an experienced and knowledgeable organization that has proven itself capable of handling a potentially prolific problem. She also stated that WHEN (Wildlife Hazard Eradication Network) from Florida and FOOL (Federal flora and fauna Organization Of endemic Life) will be lending any and all resources that Ventura County may need to combat this 120-pound vermin.
This story is one of many in our April Fool's Day package this week.
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Comments
RATS? I was under the impression they are called tasmanian devils and are NOT rodents. In case we have fogotten high school biology, all rodents have incisors as teeth and not the sharp canine teeth displayed by this animal. If we use the term rat for convienience and simplicity, then a round of applause for decreasing the knowledge level of the readers.
This smacks of "April's Fool" mischief. Actually the whole issue does (I got my paper copy yesterday). From the front page headline all the way through, all I could do is scratch my head and wonder...
I have to agree somewhat with Robear BUT...I have actually captured three of these "rats" and am using them around my house for security. I have no intention of returning them to the Moorpark College Zoo. As far as I am concerned, it's "Finder's Keepers, Loser's Weepers". They were domesticated and trained by the Leprechauns that live in my back yard.
I completely agree with jonsanvcs. Maybe some entrepreneur, or Moorpark College can start selling these critters via TV infomercials like the Alpacas. By the way, Leprechauns are real, I've seen one.
Ohh, and don't foret about the dangerous Tasmanian Mock Walrus! Scary stuff!