AR-News: (Netherlands) ‘Nazi’ racoons overrun Europe

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

8 March 2004
KASSEL - The story goes that Nazi henchman Hermann Goering imported a pair of 
racoons from America in 1934 and ordered them set free in the woods of 
central Germany to "enrich the Reich's fauna", as he put it at the time. 

In the 70 years since then, these "Nazi racoons" have multiplied in such 
prodigious numbers that there may be upwards of a million of the rascally American 
mammals in Germany alone - and they are spreading rapidly to neighbouring 
countries at an alarming rate. 

So alarming is the spread of these nocturnal creatures, who have no natural 
enemies in Europe, that officials are considering drastic measures to cull 
them. 

A stroll through Kassel, in the wooded hill country north of Frankfurt, 
reveals a city under siege. It was near here that that first coon couple was 
released, and it is here that they are most populous. 

Experts say there are 100 racoons per square kilometre in the Kassel area - 
the same density reported in the racoon's natural habitat in North America. 





full story:

 
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=52&story_id=5390 
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