Joburg remains committed to rodent control in Alex despite failed owl project

The City of Johannesburg remains committed to tackling the rodent problem in Alexandra — 10 years after it was forced to abandon the highly-publicised owl project a few years after it was introduced.

In 2012 the city introduced barn owls in a R2.5m plan to fight a rat infestation in the area.

The nocturnal birds were placed at four schools in Alexandra, each containing four owls, and one in Marlboro. 

Two years later reports emerged that the owls were being decapitated by fearful residents. 

Experts also said the owls would not “be able to control rats in a densely populated area such as Alexandra”.

The city has now confirmed the project was abandoned but other initiatives, such as rat cages to trap rodents and fumigating the burrows where they live, remain in place to some success.

“Those are animals (owls) that operate in the evening and require a place to be dark, so wherever an area is lit up they are not able to hunt [properly],” director for the city's region E Makgafela Thaba said.

“A secondary aspect is that due to beliefs people have, a number of complaints were received about the programme.”

Despite this, he said the city remained committed to finding “every mechanism that can be applied to alleviate” the issue.

This has yielded some success, Thaba said, as they managed to capture about 10,000 rodents in the past financial year.

This is in addition to the number that die after ingesting poisoned food set as traps for them.

“We were able to make motivation to Treasury through the PEP [public employment project] whereby we received about R12.8m, but it wasn't [just] to deal with the rodent issues in Alexandra alone. The project is split into a number of categories. 

“To date, there are about 55 people employed to deal with the rodent programme. We've also appointed people to do the cleaning of the streets and the warriors are helping us to get rid of litter making its way into the Jukskei River.”

This brings to 296 the number of people employed for the various initiatives.

Adding to this was Ephraim Pooe, who until earlier this year was part of the region's citizen relations management team and headed the owl project when he joined in 2014.

“It could not be sustained due to community members' beliefs about owls. Most people believe owls are used for witchcraft so as much as meetings were held to [present] the idea, once the owls were there things didn't go as planned.

"[But] pest control has always been there — the owl [introduction] was just a new element introduced because of the capabilities they have.”

Alexandra resident Thando Nkosi said while the city's initiatives had solved “20% to 30% of our problems”, rodent control remained a big issue in the community.

Nkosi, 23, has lived in Alex all his life.

“It's been an issue my entire life. The situation has been bad because we live in an environment where we have many shacks in one place so rats would infiltrate our houses, eat our clothes and food. You'd wake up sometimes to find a young person bitten by a rat.”

He also weighed in on other projects implemented by the city, including the rat cages, saying residents found them “hard to implement because we don't know where to locate them”.

“I don't want to say they are smart but they are in a way because they are untraceable. You can't record where they are at what time. You can see one passing here, the next minute it's gone,” he said.

Adding to this was their increased presence at night which makes them harder to spot.

“Our problems can be solved if the municipality introduces more projects aimed at ensuring our environment is kept clean every day.

“It solved [a bit] of our problem but slowly but surely we're getting there. I think an awareness programme to keep the environment clean [will help].”

TimesLIVE