{"id":9018,"date":"2014-03-17T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/portstrategy.nfdtesting.uk\/greenport\/2014\/03\/17\/hitching-an-uninvited-lift\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T14:47:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T13:47:52","slug":"hitching-an-uninvited-lift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/news\/container-cargo-handling\/hitching-an-uninvited-lift\/","title":{"rendered":"Hitching an uninvited lift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>However, most ports don\u2019t want to keep very toxic chemicals hanging about either, so non-toxic bait boxes or sticky boards are scattered about key areas and only if there\u2019s signs of chewing or roaches do the poisons go down.<\/p>\n<p>Still, ports do suffer, like most places, from waves of rodent arrivals. The fact that vessels still come in with rats onboard can be a real problem not just for ports and people but for local wildlife. As Poppy Benson of Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge puts it: \u201cRat spills can be far worse than oil spills. Oil degrades over time while rats multiply, and multiply&#8230;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Further, ports could still be entry sites for rat-borne diseases. A recent study in a Vancouver facility showed that infections in the local rat population were indeed coming from shipping activities. It\u2019s a reminder that there\u2019s still a risk from global logistics: after all, international shipping has been responsible for spreading both rats and their diseases around the world, including the notorious bubonic plague.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mice, rats and cockroaches usually come under a fairly intense prevention program: not only do they spread disease but if they get a foothold in a food import facility it\u2019s difficult to get rid of them without damaging food stocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":9019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-9018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9020,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9018\/revisions\/9020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9018"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=9018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}