When Gerard Dallow answers his phone in the morning, people usually want to talk to him about bush rats, funnel webs or mosquitoes. But since heavy rains soaked Sydney, the phone has been ringing non-stop.
“The problem with rats at the moment is that a lot of native rats are just doing abnormal things. They live in the ground, so again, all the rain and water is flooding them out of their homes and they are walking around aimlessly.” Spiders, such as funnel webs, are just some of the animals whose natural habitat has been impacted by the rains.Sydney University medical entomologist Cameron Webb said that, while animals don’t want to be in our homes, they have limited options with so much water in the landscape.He added it was important not to use too many pesticide sprays in a bid to get rid of insects because it could do more harm than good.
“The question will be, ‘Can plants and animals build up the resilience to deal with [more frequent and extreme events] happening?’ We really don’t know that for sure,” he said. In the past three weeks, WIRES has received more than 550 rescue and advice calls for birds alone in flood-affected areas of NSW, a 20 per cent increase over the same period last year. The rescues ranged from waterlogged birds unable to fly and fledglings abandoning tree hollow nests that had filled with rainwater to displaced marine birds either blown off course or simply exhausted by gale-force winds.
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