Too many mice in Australia
Australia´s rushing to legalize a dangerous poison in a bid to wipe out a plague of mice.
Millions of rodents have been destroying crops and stored grain across the country´s south-east. It´s a cruel blow to farmers in a region that´s already ravaged by wildfires, floods, and drought. According to the Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall, Australia was at a critical point and if the country didn´t significantly reduce the number of mice by spring, it would cause an absolute economic and social crisis in rural and regional New South Wales.
The state government´s ordered 5,000 liters of the banned poison Bromadiolone from India; however, critics fear that it could kill not only mice but also the animals that prey on them in the wild.
Difficult words: plague (an unusually large number of animals or insects that cause a lot of damage), ravage (to cause severe and extensive damage to something), prey (to hunt and kill for food).