Intelligence analysts and first responders should pay attention to mice. As it turns out, mouse populations in agricultural areas exhibit some of the same characteristics of volatility, uncertainty and complexity that homeland security faces in other risks. And what works on mice, might just work on terrorists and earthquakes.

In Australia, mouse plagues are a serious deal. Conservative estimates on the losses associated with the 1993 plague are upwards of AU$64.5 million. And the losses have a cyclical, probabilistic cycle as well, observed to be around once every four years. For actuarial comparison, the US National Flood Insurance Program establishes a regulatory minimum of protection against the 1% annual chance flood, in other words the 100 year event. Unlike bandicoots, the house mouse first came to Australia from Europe…making it an invasive species. The first recorded mouse plague in Australia was in 1917.

Is it weird that we’re posing with this pile of mice?

Mouse plagues are not something we deal with on the same scale in the US, although there are interesting parallels between the governmental approach to managing pest animal outbreaks and some of the other disaster aid management programs available in the US. In addition to being an enormous economic stress on rural agricultural areas, mouse plagues are pretty tough to predict and equally tough to manage. There is both a lot that scientists still need to understand about prediction and monitoring of mouse population densities during and before the growing season, and a lot of room for improved crop mitigation and disaster response.

Often the onset of the plagues is so sudden, it is not recognized as a plague until the mouse population has reached plague numbers, creating challenges for those who have to respond with mouse bait, and even creating shortages in mouse bait. In one instance a month long backlog of mouse bait highlighted that entire crops can be lost in the span of days, while farmers waited for the delivery of poison for weeks.

Take a moment to consider that sophisticated modern nations can face tactical and strategic surprise in the form of mouse plagues.

Strategic Mouse Poison Stockpile

In 2011 the government of south Australia convened and responded to recommendations from a “state mouse working party” (which probably sounds like a lot more fun than it was) on how to provide a better framework for delivering governmental assistance to farmers. The recommendations are interesting, and parallel many of the challenges of US management of complicated risks between public and private sector interests, and encouraging private investment to manage public risks.

The recommendations include regulatory relief for farmers to be able to mix pesticides on their own property, easing licensure requirements for specialists who mix the zinc phosphide bait into the soil, and other means of improving knowledge and application of baiting technology in rural areas. In addition, the recommendations tackle an interesting issue of biosecurity — identifying methods and mechanisms by which to collect and transmit agricultural intelligence products on the state of mouse populations and their potential threat to the environment.

Surprise! We just ate your whole crop. You mad, bro?

That second piece is particularly interesting. There are significant lessons that the US can learn in terms of establishing and being ready to repurpose intelligence architecture to respond to weird threats and hazards. In particular, the US learned this lesson during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, as public health threats highlighted the need to provide medical intelligence and information sharing with uncommon partners.

Here mice become an intelligence metaphor — a representation of modern risk that pays little attention to the artificial distinctions we make between infrastructure sectors or security disciplines. Risks like this force interdisciplinary coordination.

Mouseopcenter

Recommendation 20 on the 2011 report is particularly interesting as well. It recommends that the house mouse not be declared for control under the Natural Resources Management Act 2004. The rationale for this decision is the regulatory cost of doing so — and here I think there is an interesting parallel, not just between our own agricultural or environmental policies and regulatory benefit cost analysis, but in the way we evaluate and address threats. Declaring the mouse a pest would also open up avenues for government funding to manage mouse populations.

One of the most interesting responses has been the creation of the mouse alert website, a government funded forum for monitoring mouse populations that can also trigger recommendations about population control. Similar to the USGS “did you feel it” program, this also combines an element of public information and warning.

Put in terms of domestic preparedness for countering threats, the way Australia has learned to cope with a highly unpredictable, surprisingly hard to manage risk, has been a fascinating interdisciplinary exercise. Like many of the complex risks we now face, it has required the cooperation of intelligence and operations capabilities, the incorporation of uncommon partners in operations, and a wholly invented admixture of regulatory controls, capability development and coordination.

Sound familiar?