EU Kangaroo Rat Court Ruling - France Is Scolded Over Care of Great Hamster of Alsace

Is this a case of Hamster Envy?

Ruling Favors a 10-Inch Citizen of France

By STEVEN ERLANGER Published: June 9, 2011

France Is Scolded Over Care of Great Hamster of Alsace - NYTimes.com

excerpts-

The Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Union’s highest court, ruled Thursday that France had failed to protect the Great Hamster of Alsace, sometimes known as the European hamster, the last wild hamster species in Western Europe. If France does not adjust its agricultural and urbanization policies sufficiently to protect it, the court said, the government will be subject to fines of as much as $24.6 million.

The Great Hamster likes grass and crops like alfalfa, but these have largely been replaced by corn, which is not ripe in the spring when the hamster awakens from six months of hibernation, eager to eat and mate. It must make longer and more hazardous journeys as its grazing area shrinks because of new highways and housing developments.

“Protection measures for the Great Hamster put in place by France were insufficient” in 2008 “to ensure the strict protection of the species” in accordance with European law, the court ruled. The hamster has been protected legally since 1993, and while it is prevalent in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, it is thought to exist in Western Europe only in Alsace.

Farmers have generally considered the hamster to be a farmyard pest, and before it was protected they flooded its burrows and used poison and traps to kill it.

Now they have much bigger PEST!

also read http://sheikyermami.com/2011/02/14/fjordman-do-western-authorities-care-more-about-hamsters-than-about-europeans/