 Ecologically based rodent management is a concept which is now taking center stage in Asia and also in other regions around the globe. What it is, is it's a change in mindset where in the past has been a focus primarily on use of identicides of poisons. And given rodents and mammals, these poisons can have quite a marked effect on quite a range of animals including humans and the risks therefore of safety and health are too high in many cases. So ecologically based rodent management is where we're understanding better the ecology of the main pest species. And in Asia there is quite a range of species depending on which country you're in, which is a major rodent pest. So it's up to 15 different species. And so we need to understand the ecology of each of those, where they live, when they breed, what are their movement patterns linked to the cropping system. And from that we can then develop a movement practice which is more in line with the everyday life of a rat and how we can then help the communities to manage that. So ecologically based rodent management has a number of simple principles. For example, in Indonesia and Vietnam with the rice field rat, ratasagenta venta. There we work closely with communities. It's essential where you have small farmers with only one or two hectares that they work together. Because if one farmer does everything one should do to manage rats and his neighbour does not, then the rats will quickly move across into that farmer's property. So we're looking at synchronising of cropping. So that is really important. If crops are more than two weeks planted apart, then that means that there's more food on the table for rats for longer periods of time and their breeding will continue for much longer. So we need to prevent asynchrony of cropping and have crops planted within two weeks of each other, within an area of say 200 hectares. We also need to have good hygiene. Hygiene in the fields, hygiene in the villages. Where possible the banks around the edges of crops should be less than 30 centimetres wide because then the rodents are unable to develop nests and to burrow into those banks, which are usually very important nesting sites for rodents. So together with those actions and then trying to work out when and where once you conduct community management, we're able to work with communities to develop best practice. If losses are high for a particular crop, for example in North Vietnam the winter crop, rodents are usually not a big problem but in the subsequent spring crop it is a problem, then you can look at using a trap barrier system. Where you're looking at a plastic fence with a multiple capture trap and you're using the rice, especially early planted rice, as a way to attract rats into your traps. Now in that situation you can protect up to about 10 hectares for using a 20 metre by 20 metre trap barrier system. But that's only if your losses are more than 10%. Otherwise you just need to focus on ecologically base rodent management, the general principles. In 2009 in Indonesia and Vietnam we're working very closely with our partners in those countries to look at understanding how better we can get the communities to be involved in this whole process. And also from that work we're trying to understand how we can better get the scaling up, the diffusion of ecologically base rodent management over a much larger scale. We've been very successful working with villages of say 100 hectares, how can we now move that to a much larger area. And from our work we've also been looking at monitoring the diffusion and impact of ecologically base rodent management. In Vietnam we've now estimated in the Mekong and Red River Delta about 100,000 farmers are now using this technology. In Indonesia about 75,000 farmers are adopters of this technology and they're getting yield increases of about half a tonne per hectare. One of the highlights in 2009 was that Irie held an international conference here at Los Benyos. And it's the first time that Irie has held a conference on rodents for 20 years. And that conference came about because there were these massive outbreaks of rodents leading to major impacts on livelihoods in Mizoram and India, in the Chittagong health tract region in Bangladesh and also in the Chin state region in Myanmar. And there are also reports of significant losses in the upland areas of Laos. We're trying to work out what were the factors behind that. There were certainly UN World Food Programme initiatives to help to manage the issues because of the food shortages in those regions. But what we're trying to do as an international community and really helps facilitate that process is to understand why these outbreaks have occurred and to document that so that in future years we can learn from what's been happening over the outbreaks in 2008 and 2009. So ecologically base rodent management is now at an interesting phase because it's being adopted not only in Southeast Asia but also in South Asia, in Bangladesh and in Tanzania, in Namibia, in Swaziland. So it's being spread across to Africa. Also in Europe there is now a situation where at the end of 2010 into 2011 there will be chemicals which have been used for decades for poisoning rodents, managing rodents which will no longer be available to farmers in those regions. So in Europe basically they're being forced to look at other options and the best option available to them is ecologically based rodent management. So it's a concept which is gathering a lot of momentum and through the irrigated rice research consortium has the expertise there which is able to help facilitate and to promote this approach for rodent management.