'Nazi' raccoons v fluffy rabbits: no contest

One of Nazi Germany's more curious legacies is rearing its head in an increasing number of the country's backyards. Raccoons, introduced by Hermann Goering, are becoming a sizeable menace.

It was in 1934 that the Luftwaffe chief came up with the idea of releasing a pair of raccoons into the wild, claiming he wanted to spice up the Third Reich's flora and fauna. Clearly, he was unaware of the havoc his decision would wreak almost three-quarters of a century later.

Today Germany is overrun with raccoons. While native German species, such as the wild cat, lynx and beaver, are now threatened with extinction, numbers of the black and white furry animals have soared in the 70 years since they were imported from North America. This week, wildlife experts estimated that Germany's raccoon population has hit one million.

Dr Ulf Hohmann, a raccoon expert and wildlife biologist at Rhineland-Pfalz's Research Institute for Woodland and Forest Ecology, said: "The problem is that raccoons have no natural predators, are bad hunters, and will eat almost anything." Dr Hohmann has studied the carnivores for 12 years and has spent the past three tracking them in the central German city of Kassel, where the problem is worst.

Kassel, which is north of Frankfurt and is set in wooded countryside, has been under siege by raccoons since the 1960s. Now the city has about 100 raccoons per hectare in the city - one every 100 square metres.

"It's the same density as you would find in the urban raccoon's natural habitat, in North American cities like Toronto or Washington," Dr Hohmann said. He estimates that at least half of Kassel's residents regularly encounter the creatures. Curious and unafraid of humans, they rifle through rubbish bins and sneak into houses for food.

"Their usual trick is to climb through cat flaps and set up home in a loft," Dr Hohmann said. "Often people will return from holiday to find they have a new lodger."

Although similar numbers of raccoons are found in the east German state of Brandenburg, north of Berlin, Kassel's problem is now so acute that city authorities have been forced to employ their own Raccoon Man. His mission is to patrol the city's streets and come to the rescue of residents terrorised by the pests.

But although raccoons can be legally hunted in Germany (as in the USA), and German hunting organisations are lobbying to put a bounty on raccoons' heads, the scientific view is that culling is not the solution. "They breed so fast, shooting them won't even make a small dent in the population," Dr Hohmann said. "The challenge is to educate the public not to feed them and how to live with them as Americans do."

But if raccoons in Germany are breeding like rabbits, the country's hares and rabbits are hardly breeding at all.

Unlike numbers of wild rabbits in Britain, which are back at the 37.5 million mark after they became resistant to the myxomatosis virus that almost wiped out the population in the 1950s - Germany's bunnies haven't fared so well. Hares and rabbits are now endangered. Indeed, their populations are so depleted that hunting fanatics have agreed to hang up their shotguns and go and count them instead.

More than 900 hunters are being sent out this month on a great German Easter Bunny hunt. The €100,000, state-funded project is being co-ordinated by the German pro-hunting lobby group DJV, in an attempt to gather accurate information on the state of Germany's field hare population.