Published: Less than 10 min ago
The situation is described as critical and desperate.
In order to save the Spanish harvests, the government has decided to increase preparedness – and gas to death 250,000 rabbits.
– We are facing an unprecedented pain, says a representative of COAG to the newspaper La Vanguardia.
The severe drought came after an exceptionally dry winter that followed Spain’s hottest summer on record.
Water shortages and poor harvests have become a fact – including in Catalonia, which is located in the north-eastern parts of the country.
But in the middle of the crisis, the farmers see a new problem in the white eye. Hundreds of thousands of rabbits swarming over the fields and munching on what little is left of the fragile crops.
Now the Spanish government is doing everything in its power to push back against the emerging population.
A decision has been made to gas to death 250,000 of the so-called hybrid rabbits, reports The Guardian.
Bigger and more voracious
It was during the pandemic that the population grew strong – when rabbit hunting slowed down for just over two years.
It was also then that the rabbits developed and created an immunity to the rabbit plague.
– We are facing an unprecedented plague of hybrid rabbits. They are a mixture of wild and domesticated rabbits that are larger, more voracious and have a greater ability to reproduce, a representative of the agricultural and livestock organization COAG told La Vanguardia newspaper.
The situation is described as critical and desperate
Several winegrowers testify that the situation is critical and desperate.
– The females can have seven or eight offspring every two months, says Alex Foix, a wine grower in the village of Verdú to The Guardian.
In order to keep the population at a manageable level, it has now been allowed to use aluminum phosphate, which releases a poisonous phosphine gas when placed inside the rabbits’ holes – and kills the rabbits.
By September at the latest, 250,000 rabbits are expected to have been gassed to death.