The reign in Spain: Out-of-control rodents ruin crops

MADRID, Spain - It's been a messy summer in Spain: a blackout in Barcelona, an oil spill in the Mediterranean, and giant schools of jellyfish lurking off beaches packed with vacationers.

Now comes another woe: millions of mouselike rodents called voles feasting on beets and potatoes in an infestation that has prompted desperation in one of Spain's agricultural heartlands.

The invasion of Castille-Leon in north-central Spain began gently 10 months ago but has snowballed to stunning proportions. Farmers' unions say the region is crawling with an estimated 7.5 million voles. The local government doesn't know the cause, or the solution.

Spanish television aired footage of scores of voles darting in and out of holes in what would normally be rich, healthy farmland, or quivering in the throes of death brought on by pesticide.

Some voles have even made it into gardens of homes in the region's main city, Valladolid, according to news reports.

"There has never been a plague like the one we have now," said the Castille-Leon regional agriculture minister, Silvia Clemente. Officials have asked agronomists, veterinarians and biologists what on earth is happening, and no one really knows, she said.

"There are no measures that have been proven to work against a plague of these characteristics," Clemente said.

For now, crews are fighting with fire. They started igniting controlled blazes yesterday on harvested farmland to try to kill off the pests, acting with utmost care to keep the flames from spreading to bone-dry terrain prone to forest fires.

Jose Antonio del Brio, head of the local farmers' association in the town of Fresno el Viejo, where the first fires were set, said every farm in the area was being eaten by voles. First it was the grain crops, 40 percent lost to the voles, and now beets, potatoes and corn are on the menu.

"We cannot do anything against these animals, who are taking food out of our children's mouths," del Brio said.

A vole problem was first detected in Castille-Leon last September. Then, officials used chemicals to try to kill them off, but groups filed a complaint and the practice was halted. The vole population exploded.

"Nothing of what is happening with this plague falls within the expected," Clemente said, "because there are no precedents."