UN to breed owls to combat rat scourge in Laos

Now, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization plans to persuade villagers to protect pale-faced owls, as it is a predator by nature.

After traps failed and pesticides offered mixed results, the UN decided to breed the birds to end the rat scourge and educate villagers about their vital role in the ecosystem.

"Some people can joke about this, but it is a very good bird and can do a lot of good work. Some villagers who eat the barn owls might change his idea when they know owls can get rid of rats in their farms," said Serge Verniau, the country representative in Laos for the U.N. agency.

Verniau said the rodent outbreak first hit the farming communities last year after flowering bamboo which bloom every 50 years provided the rats with a plentiful food source. The rats wiped out much of the November harvest of rice, cassava and sesame. The rodents have destroyed crops in seven provinces in the country's north. It estimates that the outbreak has left 130,000 people short of food in a country of more than 6 million people.

"People in some villages have lost everything. All their crops were destroyed last year. That is why there is urgency for food assistance," Verniau said.

Elisabeth Faure, the food program's acting country director in Laos, said that the rat infestation is the sort of disaster along with floods that sends vulnerable families over the edge. Laos is one of the poorest countries in Asia, with one of two children under 5 in rural areas chronically malnourished and two-thirds of the population routinely facing food shortages, she said.

"When I went up to the north, farmers were telling stories of their rice huts shaking and a swarm of rats eating everything around them. It was like a sea of rats," Faure said. "Many people had lost absolutely everything. It is a big shock on a top of a bad situation."

Biologists acknowledge that meddling with ecosystems carries risks, especially when new species are introduced. The UN's plan would appear to be less risky, though, because the barn owl is an established predator.