Apparently Sydney doesn't have enough rats already... so they are going to release an army of native Bush rats into the city.... to be fair, these are not like the usual sewer dwelling Black rats, and they want them back to redress the balance of the current rat population. Smacks a little of biologic meddling, but it is an interesting idea.
We live on a small piece of water, more broad river than lake, so we see plenty of water rats scurrying along the banks when we walk in the evenings, and often they are foraging in the rubbish bins! It all adds excitement to the dogs' walks as we won't let them chase the ducks, but ratting is sometimes permitted. To be fair they have never caught one!
Personally, I would prefer it if we had squirrels here - I miss them, particularly the red ones. In the UK, the larger American grey squirrels have almost over run the red ones... so nice to read they are working on plans to redress that balance too!
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/Redsquirrel
