Owls used to eradicate rodents in Bengkulu

Owls used to eradicate rodents in Bengkulu

The Bengkulu provincial government is promoting the use of
owls to combat rodents in rice-producing centers in the province,
local agricultural office director Mangsury Thaib said here on Saturday.

Mangsury said his office had recently provided a number of
owls to Seginim and Seluma villages in South Bengkulu to fight
the rodents, and the results had been very satisfactory.

"The rodents almost disappeared from the two villages after
the owls were released there," Mangsury said, adding that local
farmers had expressed their appreciation for the assistance.

He claimed that one owl could dispose of at least one hundred
rodents per day. Mangsury expressed the hope that farmers in
Bengkulu would lose their traditional fear of owls and be willing
to have the birds in their villages.

He also called on the local people never to hunt owls as the
amount of money needed to purchase a well-trained owl was quite
high.

The Bengkulu provincial government has been promoting the use
of owls to eradicate rodents for the past three years, in
addition to the conventional use of sulfur and other chemical
substances.

The use of owls to eradicate rodents has also been applied
recently in other places, including Yogyakarta, where local
governments have also been releasing non-venomous snakes to
combat the rodents. -- Antara