Rabbit, flood, these two words together will definitely remind us of Australia, yes, Australia's hare flood is really famous, from the first two dozen to tens of billions, Australia has carried out a hundred years of human rabbit wars, and the result? The Australian hare successfully carried through six encirclements and suppressions, and finally declared the victory of the Everybody Rabbit War in an absolute number.
The hare on the other side of the sea is flooded, the price of spicy rabbit head on this side of the sea has soared, and how many netizens have issued sighs: Born in the blessing and do not know the blessing! On the boundaries of the continent, hares have not been flooded or allowed to flood until the hares were forbidden to hunt, and the scale did not recover much.
Just when we thought that as long as the rabbits would not flood, the plateau pika on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau once hit the "foodies" in the face, because the plateau pika not only flooded, but even spent hundreds of millions of yuan to eliminate nearly half a century, the number is still stable and rising, what is even more unexpected is that because it was identified as destroying the plateau vegetation for such a long time, experts suddenly stood up to "rehabilitate" the plateau pika, and was also rated as the "great hero" of the plateau.
Plateau pika has become the "first harm" of destroying vegetation
Plateau pika, also known as the sound rat, stone rabbit, its appearance like a rabbit, habits like a mouse, Tibetan called it "Abuza", so we like to call it pika, pika belongs to the pika family and the rabbit family to which the hare belongs are divided under the rabbit order, and its relationship is considered a cousin.
Plateau pika whole body round, no tail, the body is gray-brown, is a unique species of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, its population in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau area base is very large, the caves they dig can be said to be everywhere, the plateau pika excavation technology is very exquisite, the general plateau pika lives in pairs, there are also "bachelors" living alone, their caves are divided into complex residential caves and temporary rest of the hidden caves, residential complex caves often open 3-5 doors, outside the cave is intertwined into a network of running, Don't look at the plateau pika body length between 12-19 cm, their total runway length can reach 6-60 meters, and the nest area after pairing averages 2308 square meters.
Plateau vegetation is most afraid of grassland degradation, the plateau environment is harsh, it is difficult to restore the past after the occurrence of vegetation degradation, coupled with the development of animal husbandry in the plateau area, this plateau pika that loves to burrow and love to occupy the territory is naturally identified as the culprit of destroying the plateau vegetation.
Watching the plateau vegetation gradually "bald", the plateau pika in groups of holes, the local government finally can not sit still, from 1958, some places began to investigate and control the number of plateau pika, this survey does not matter, it is estimated that the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau pika has about 1.2 billion, this large-scale control activities officially began in 1962.
The sparsely populated Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region is similar to the situation in Australia, it is impossible to catch by hand, the easiest way to eliminate the plateau pika is to poison the bait, the eradication campaign reached its peak in 1962-1965, and although the scale of the poisoning bait has been reduced, it has been continuous.
Between 1986 and 1994 alone, about 7.5 million square meters of pasture were baited, and in 1997, the eradication of the plateau pika was celebrated on a Beijing television program, and in 2006, Qinghai Province allocated $35 million to drop nearly 360,000 square kilometers of poison to carry out a new phase of poison killing.
Nearly half a century of pika eradication operations have ushered in a reversal
On the one hand, the vigorous eradication of the plateau pika is underway, on the other hand, the rate of degradation of plateau vegetation has not slowed down much, and some experts who have done in-depth investigation cannot sit still, because they have found that the areas with serious degradation of plateau vegetation are not only dense areas of plateau pikas, but also the main areas of grazing.
These experts began to question: Why is the main culprit in the degradation of plateau vegetation not caused by overgrazing?
Researchers found that the highland pika prefers to live in most of the places with little vegetation cover and low vegetation height, but the highland pika is rarely seen in places with lush vegetation, and the plateau pika actually acts as a "load bearer" for local ecological restoration.
Why? Plateau pika is equivalent to a small arable machine, its burrowing activities can loosen and improve the soil, reduce soil permeability to slow down soil erosion, their feces and residues also bring a large amount of organic matter to the land, studies have shown that in the plateau pika frequent activity area, the content of nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus in the soil are higher than in areas without pika caves, due to the influence of these factors, the plateau pika activity area vegetation tends to grow higher and faster.
Secondly, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau lacks shelter, the plateau pika's cave has become a refuge for birds and lizards and other small animals, if the plateau pika disappears, the protection place of these animals will no longer exist, and biodiversity will not be able to talk about, not to mention that the fat plateau pika is the ration for the survival of wolves, Tibetan foxes, eagles and other carnivores, and the Tibetan fox is also the exclusive predator of the plateau pika.
According to expert surveys, in the key areas of the treatment of plateau pikas, not only has the vegetation not increased much, but there is no trace of local predators, and even the number of birds and amphibians has declined rapidly, which does not exclude the manslaughter of these animals by poisonous bait.
epilogue
The contribution of the plateau pika to the environment satisfies all the elements of the local key species definition, and has long formed an inseparable coexistence relationship with the unique climatic environment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region, and those who vigorously advocate the elimination of the plateau pika will never admit that this small animal eats an average of 77.3 grams of fresh grass per day, to the detriment of animal husbandry.
Fortunately, with the improvement of the level of scientific research, people's understanding of the plateau pika has made great progress, and they have begun to "rehabilitate" this cute plateau animal, and while the Tibetan fox is popular on the Internet, we should not forget that the food of the Tibetan fox is also very cute.