PostedJune 15, 2022, 4:27 PM
The operator of a new motorway around Strasbourg has kept its commitment. In exchange, he contributed to the reintroduction of 60 specimens of this emblematic species of Alsace.
Sixty European hamsters from Alsace have been reintroduced regarding twenty kilometers from the German border.
AFP
A highway, of course, but more hamsters: the French group Vinci, which operates a new highway with a controversial environmental impact in the east of France, had to commit, to compensate, to a program to reintroduce the large Alsatian hamster, an emblematic species whose habitat is threatened by human activity.
In Ernolsheim-Bruche, regarding twenty kilometers from the German border, 60 large hamsters are to be reintroduced that morning. Under a blazing sun, small mammals with snouts studded with white spots wait, in a wooden cage, to be released in a plot of wheat. The hatch opens, and the “cricetus cricetus”, scientific name of the rodent, falls into the burrow regarding 80 cm deep dug beforehand, immediately covered with agglomerated straw.
critically endangered
“The goal is for them to come out in the evening, when there is less risk of raptor attacks,” explains Célia Schappeller, caretaker with the association Safeguarding Wildlife, who raised the hamsters. in captivity. Also known as the “European hamster”, the animal is listed as “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. An electric fence is also there to avoid terrestrial predators: foxes, badgers or even cats.
On three hectares, the operation is repeated according to a methodical plan to avoid consanguinity in the burrows and respecting a male-female alternation to encourage fruitful encounters. “Our operation aims to strengthen existing populations,” confirms Arnaud Guillemain, the environment manager of Vinci Autoroutes. The releases take place a few hundred meters as the crow flies from the new A355 motorway, the controversial western bypass of the city of Strasbourg.
No corn for ten years
This 24 km double toll lane, intended to relieve congestion in the city, was inaugurated in December, following more than 40 years of controversy and local opposition. It is the first infrastructure project in France born with a legal obligation to compensate for the loss of biodiversity, since a law of 2016.
“Having built the highway on agricultural plots, in particular with wheat fields, which are the habitat of the European hamster, we compensated on other plots of wheat”, sums up Arnaud Guillemain. This mechanism initiated in 2017, when work began, has already allowed the reintroduction of 800 specimens.
France’s first group of motorway concessions have linked up with ‘dozens of farmers’, who pledge not to grow corn for ten years, a crop that pushes females to cannibalism, but instead keep wheat or standing alfalfa, favorable to “Kornferkel”, the name of the large hamster in Alsatian, literally “little cereal pig”.
“A good indicator”
An “umbrella” or “sentinel” species, “the hamster is a good indicator of the viability of an agricultural system”, indicates Timothée Gérard, whose thesis in biology, carried out with the CNRS and the University of Strasbourg, is financed by Vinci Highways. “Current field treatments”, linked to conventional agriculture, mean that there is “a fairly significant reduction in soil quality, with insect communities disappearing”.
(AFP)