Managing the Mautam
The predator satiation hypothesis holds that by fruiting at the same time, a plant population increases the survival rate of their seeds by flooding the area with fruit so that even if predators eat their fill, there will still be seeds left over. Certain species of bamboo, for instance, have a flowering cycle longer than the lifespan of their rodent predators. Bamboos can thus regulate animal populations by causing starvation during the period between flowering events.
The problem for humans in such a case is one of collateral damage. The entire world population of the bamboo species Melocanna Baccifera blossoms just about every 48 years. This blossoming bamboo produces fruit that has a large seed. Forest rats feed on the seeds. The rats then reproduce at an accelerated rate. Once the nocturnal rats have stripped the landscape of bamboo fruit, they devour other growing and stored crops including grains, potatoes, maize, chili, and sesame. The rodents can gnaw through the floors and walls of granaries and other storage containers. According to The Times of India, the flowering of 1958-59 caused a famine that killed as many as 15,000 people.
During the next cycle in 2008, the number of actual casualties was greatly reduced. A combination of harvesting the bamboo, shooting the rats and staging relief supplies in a timely way had the effect of mitigating starvation. There was, of course, hunger in the most remote areas. But not on the scale seen during the 1958-59 famine. The near famine conditions that did occur were largely attributed to political corruption and the for-profit seizure of relief supplies intended for potential victims of the “flowering famine.”
The areas of Northeast India (primarily in Mizoram and Manipur States) as well as regions of Burma (mainly Chin State) and Bangladesh (Hill Tracts) that normally suffer from an overpopulation of rats were, for the most part, spared the worst of it. Could it have been managed better? Sure. Are there lessons to be learned? Certainly. But warding off famine is far better than trying to locate starving individuals in the wake of it.
— by Bob Kalk