Unintended consequences… The Three Gorges Dam in China, and the many other new dams built recently, apparently did what they were intended to recently, which is to prevent the massive flooding which has been a feature of Chinese history. That’s to say: there were still severe floods, but not anything like the vast scale that had occurred previously, without the dam to control the flow of water down the Yangtze.
However, there’s been a side-effect no-one anticipated – as the waters backed up to unprecedented levels behind the dam, they flooded lots of little holes in the ground, and drove out the occupants… Rats – billions of them, which have devastated crops and are on the march…. Farmers in one township have killed 90 tons of rats and not dented the horde… Subtopia has a detailed account of this phenomenon, and links to an amazing video from Reuters… Not one to watch if you have a rat phobia!
