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Rats And Killer Mosquitoes
Sweep Europe After Floods

By Michael Leidig in Vienna
The Telegraph - UK|
9-16-2

The <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/18/wflood18.xml>floods that swept across central Europe last month have devastated wildlife and plants to such an extent that they will take decades to recover, according to reports published last week.
 
A plague of mosquitoes, rats and cockroaches has also been unleashed by the flood waters.
 
Teams of volunteers continue to clear mud from roads as the process of rebuilding, which is expected to cost European governments £3 billion, begins.
 
Large areas of countryside are either still underwater or coated in layers of mud and debris.
 
"At the bottom of all that mud are countless plants, whole meadows and shrublands that just don't exist anymore," said Dr Karl Schellmann, a consultant for the Austrian environmental group Global 2000.
 
"These were the feeding grounds and homes for many animals, so even those that survived the floodwaters are endangered because they do not have enough to eat. Europe will take decades to recover."
 
Vienna University produced a report last week which showed that the flooding was the worst in central Europe for more than 2,000 years, or as far as records go back.
 
"A flood like this usually does not even come along once in a century. It's the sort of thing one sees only once every 2,000 to 10,000 years," a university spokesman, Walter Hoffmann, said.
 
The Austrian Hunters' Association, which manages large tracts of countryside and monitors wildlife populations, said that scores of herds of deer had been wiped out and rivers stripped of fish as the flood waters washed them into surrounding countryside, where they died as the waters subsided.
 
An estimated two million fish died in the <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/24/wflood24.xml>Czech Republic's River Havel alone, their bodies still rotting in nearby fields.
 
"As the waters recede, we are finding scores of dead fish miles away from the nearest river," said the association's Hans Friedmann Zedka.
 
Millions of rainbow trout, pike and salmon have been lost. "The whole stock of fish from the Gartower Lake is now lying in our gardens and streets. Apart from the loss of the fish, the stench is overpowering," said Johannes Ehold, a local businessman in Laasche, Germany, which lies <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/21/wflud21.xml>along the River Elbe.
 
The few river creatures to survive are having to contend with up to 500,000 gallons of heating oil that leaked from domestic systems into the ground water in Austria.
 
"There is still a lot of flood water in certain areas of Austria and Germany - as much as 16-feet in some places - as well as a great deal of sludge.
 
"Much of the flora and fauna has been flattened and many animals have perished, either drowning or starving in the days that followed the flooding," said Alois Gansterer, the president of the hunters' association.
 
Besides deer, other wildlife - from hares and pheasants to wild pigs and badgers - has died. Now the survivors face the threat of disease.
 
Klaus Hacklaender, a zoologist from the Veterinary University in Vienna, said that disease was spreading among animals in the wake of the flooding.
 
Rats, however, are flourishing. In Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, health authorities are speaking of a "plague". Hygiene officers have issued orders for rat poison to be put in the basements of "every building" in an attempt to ward off disease.
 
Pest control officials in Austria are inundated with calls to deal not merely with the rodents but with millions of cockroaches, too.
 
"The damp heat provides the perfect breeding conditions for insects such as cockroaches," said Marianne Panek from the Austrian pest control firm Esol. We are all on emergency alert in Vienna working round the clock."
 
Authorities in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic have mostly admitted defeat in trying to kill off mosquitoes that now also have ideal breeding conditions.
 
Warnings have been issued that people must merely take care to be "bitten as little as possible". Weeks after the floods, eggs laid on the vast lakes created by the flood waters are turning into swarms of mosquitoes.
 
"It looks really bad. In some places it's impossible to go outside without protection," said Oldrich Sebesta at a regional hygiene station in the Czech republic.
 
In some areas, such as the village of Marchegg on the Czech border, signs have been put up declaring paths "no go" areas because of the numbers of mosquitoes.
 
Gerhard Scheffer, 52, a farmer, found five of his cows dead in a field after the animals were attacked by the mosquitoes. At first he thought his cattle had been killed by disease at his farm in Baunatal, central Germany, but a later examination of the carcasses discovered thousands of bites.
 
The floods have also resulted in a boom in fungi growth, which has left at least two people dead and dozens more in hospital after amateur pickers plucked poisonous toadstools instead of edible mushrooms.
 
Austria has had more cases of poisoning than other countries and authorities have now set up a special "fungus hotline" where people can get advice.
 
A spokesman for the hotline said: "We estimate that one-out-of-10 callers have picked poisonous toadstools instead of mushrooms."
 
 
 
 
© <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?view=COPYRIGHT&grid=P9>Copyright of <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/exit.jhtml?exit=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.htnm.com>Telegraph Group Limited 2002
 
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