Helsinki engaged in quiet and ruthless war against rats

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The warm autumn followed by a mild start to the winter resulted in a record number of rats in Helsinki last year. The annual number of complaints recorded by the City of Helsinki's Environment Centre was 86, which is over 40 percent more than during the five previous years on average.
      Manager Aleksei Kusnezov of the Anticimex sanitation services group confirms: "Last year was the first time when the supplier ran out of rat poison in November-December."
     
While nobody knows exactly how many rats there are in Helsinki, the estimates vary between half a million and a million. A warm summer, a long autumn, as well as a mild winter all make it easier for the rodents to breed.
      The rat is a disease carrier and it may pass on salmonella bacteria, for example.
      In addition to the spreading of diseases, rodents can also gnaw through cables.
      Typically, rats feel at home in the neighbourhood of grocery stores and restaurants, if the owners do not take care of their garbage and keep the environment clean. Moreover, rats are able to benefit from the feeding places of birds in parks and cemeteries.
      According to one expert, some particularly tenacious rat populations were found in the Sibelius and Mika Waltari parks some years ago.
     
Currently, rats are exterminated by private enterprises that are specialized in pest-fighting, after Helsinki closed down its own pest control unit in 2000.
      Typically, rodent killers use oatmeal spiced with bromadiolone, which is the active ingredient in certain rodenticides. The lethal mixture is called "342".
      Today, property and land owners themselves are responsible for pest control.
      "The giving up of the city's own fumigators was a strategic decision. The vacancies were needed for other purposes", reports Leea Kultanen of the City of Helsinki's Environment Centre.
     
The Helsinki City Council meeting tonight will start with a question hour, during which Counsellor Juha Hakola (National Coalition) is to demand from the Mayor for Public Works and Environmental Affairs Pekka Sauri (Green League) an account of the city's plans to prevent the spread of rats.


Links:
  City of Helsinki, Environment Centre

Helsingin Sanomat