The delicate balance of prey and predator has always been precarious with the increase in human population and modernization, but throw in climate change and we see chaos in our environment.

At around this time last year, Paquibato district and most of the rice-producing towns of Mindanao suffered from rat infestation that swept clean rice fields and the food security of subsistence farmers. The local government units and the agriculture department scrambled to respond to the destruction which affected thousands of farmers in the island.

Leonardo Avila, officer-in-charge of the City Agriculture Office, said yesterday that the villages affected by the rat infestation have bounced back from the plague and rehabilitation done by the city agriculture office is getting good results. About 1,391.96 hectares were damaged that affected 4,038 farmers. It also resulted to the loss of about 3,880.80 metric tons of crops such as corn, cassava, kamote, gabi, upland rice, cacao, coffee, peanut, banana and assorted vegetables. This figure might be conservative as there are nearby villages that were also affected by the rat infestation.

Avila, an environmentalist, said that the long dry spell or the El Nino, triggered the rat infestation. Added to this the human-induced devastation of the environment and the hunting for fun and food of certain animal species which affected the natural balance of the rat population.

In an interview last year, he said that “we have greatly disturbed Nature’s food chain that removed the natural control of not only rats but of other pests as well.”

Grass owls and snakes are the natural predators of rats. But their population has dwindled as people kill or hunt them. Rats, snake, owls, human. We remain at the top of the chain but we should learn how to support the cycle.