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In recent years, rats on the surface have increased steadily, says Håkan Rystrand of Anticimex in Gothenburg.
– If you start digging, you scare them off the ground. We notice this very clearly. I don’t want to just connect it to Västlänken, there are a lot of construction going on. You will find rats both east and west of the city.
– They seem to have become less shy. You used to see them go by when you were on your way home late at night, now you can see them in the middle of the day.
Poor natural enemies
How is that?
– It is the availability of food that drives them. They have some places, some parks, for example, where they know there is always food. Its only natural enemies are raptors and there aren’t many in Gothenburg. So I think they just learned that it is not so dangerous in the city, Rystrand responds.
READ MORE: Complaints about rats at Playland in Gothenburg
Some places like Brunnsparken, Hagaparken and Domkyrkoparken are popular places for rodents. They like places with water, hiding places, and food.
Great effort in the cathedral
The Cathedral Park in particular had great problems a few years ago and was the subject of an effort by the municipal administration of parks and nature in collaboration with Anticimex. The rats were controlled with poison and various types of traps. Today, the problem is minor but it has not completely disappeared.
– I was at Domkyrkoparken the other day and saw traces of rats, says Håkan Rystrand.
“I think the rats have just learned that it is not so dangerous in the city,” says Håkan Rystrand in Anticimex Gothenburg. Photo: Erik Simander and Anticimex
READ MORE: Rats have been seen in Feskekörka
Some Gothen burgers contribute to the problem by dumping their household trash in city bins, with food scraps that attract rodents. Feeding birds is another activity that benefits rats. During the hot part of the year, they are drawn to places where people have picnics.
Connected guillotines
Anticimex increasingly uses so-called smart traps to fight rats. These are of two types: partly so-called guillotines, which are placed in sewer pipes and crush animals with dull spears, partly so-called smart boxes where rats are killed with electricity. Both variants are connected and report their captures to a database.
One of the Anticimex smart boxes (electric mousetraps) in central Gothenburg. At the time of the photo, it contained three dead rats. Stock Photography. Photo: Mia Höglund
Today the company has around 650 guillotines and around 2,500 smart boxes in and around Gothenburg. In 2020, 99,700 rodents were caught in these traps.
– We use much less rat poison today compared to five years ago, says Håkan Rystrand.
READ MORE: Birds and rats in Gothenburg’s bakery
Will there be more rats in all? The statistics available do not give a clear message. During the period 2012 to 2017, the number of alarms to Anticimex about rats in Gothenburg quadrupled. Since then, the curve appears to have stabilized and the number of cases in Västra Götaland as a whole has decreased somewhat.
More large assignments
Håkan Rystrand claims, however, that allocations in the Gothenburg area continue to increase and that more and more people are requesting large objects, such as residential areas with multi-family houses or large parks.
Nobody knows how many rats are in the city.
– Is it one per inhabitant, two per inhabitant? Those numbers don’t exist, Rystrand says.
READ MORE: Tenant evicted – birds fed on balcony
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