The northern Norwegian village of Teno has a rat problem. Photo: Reader's photo, Tommi Pyykkö / Yle, MapCreator, OpenStreetMap.

The municipality of Teno in Norway, near the northern border of Finland, is experiencing a rat infestation issue, which has been escalating since May. The municipality urges all residents to take preventive measures. The northern Norwegian municipality of Teno started receiving reports of rats to an increasing extent in May. The most sightings have come from the area of ​​the municipal center (read about Tana bru in Norwegian) and the vicinity of the Gassanjárga landfill.

The municipality considers it likely that the rat problem started with the waste brought to the landfill. Waste has been transported to the landfill from coastal municipalities where rats have been present for a long time.

Heikki André Pettersen works at a snowmobile company in Teno. He says that rats have been eating reindeer skins in the company's hall this week.

The rats have been here gnawing reindeer antlers and the alarm went off, says Pettersen and shows the hair follicles left by the rats. Pettersen says that the first rats appeared in the spring. Over the course of the summer, rats have started to hang around the village.

Yes, they have increased. There are a lot of rats here now, Pettersen continues.

Pettersen believes the rats came from the Teno landfill, which is located about three kilometers from the company where he works. Traps for rats have also been placed in the hall, but with poor results.

Natural Resources Center's expert, emeritus professor of forest zoology Heikki Henttonen is not familiar with the case, but finds it surprising that a rat problem has arisen in this way in the High North region. Henttonen has been studying rodents in northern Finland since 1970, and has not heard of rat problems in northern Lapland.

I haven't come across a relevant rat problem in northern Lapland for 50 years, Henttonen says.

Emeritus professor Heikki Henttonen had not heard about Teno's rat problem. Photo: Markku Pitkänen / Yle

According to Henttonen, individual rats can sometimes come aboard a truck, but they don't live long because of the harsh winters. The population centers are also small and the people are watchful. If rats appeared, they would soon be detected and killed, says Professor Emeritus Henttonen.

Henttonen considers it strange to ship waste from the coast to the village of Teno.

It also comes to mind that if there hasn't been a rat problem in the place before, then you haven't known how to prepare for it. The case shows the importance of sound waste management. Possibly, it could also be negligence, Henttonen notes.

From the village of Teno, it is only about 20 kilometers to the Finnish border by road. However, there have been no rat sightings on the Finnish side. Minna Saramo, director of the environmental unit of Inari and Utsjoki municipality, says that there are no rats at all in Northern Lapland.

Saramo remembers only one unverified rat sighting in Northern Lapland during his working career. Saramo would also not be worried about the possible spread of the rat problem in Teno village, because there is enough distance and the rats would have a wide river to cross.

The Norwegian broadcasting company NRK already reported on rat sightings in the municipality of Teno a year ago. Countermeasures were already taken at that time, but the situation has worsened. Now it is feared that the problem will remain permanent.

The spread of rats in Teno, Norway is attributed to a combination of factors. One of the main contributors is the transportation of food waste between small towns and villages, which allows rats to travel in the cargo and spread to new areas. This is according to Frantz Jakob Rygh, a head of department at the pest control company Pelias.

In an interview to Norway's NRK, he mentions that the milder climate and deficiencies in the infrastructure are blamed for the rat problem in Teno municipality. The old waste facilities in the area are not designed to be rodent-proof, which allows rats to multiply.

Rats can live there their whole lives when they get food from the waste water, Rygh concludes.

Source: Yle

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