BOSTON, July 31 (AScribe Newswire) -- Following is commentary by Sandy Bodner, co-founder of Shelter Me, Inc. (http://www.sheltermeinc.org), a nonprofit organization dedicated to rescuing abandoned and neglected cats and dogs.
- - - -
American society's attachment to poison-based solutions for rodent control is somewhat peculiar. Consider one of the leading poisons, warfarin. It is very effective. It causes rats to bleed to death. In a one-on-one battle, rats lose. But rats may still be winning the war. Why? Serious problems can arise when poison enters the food chain. As recently as June 12, 2009, the Anchorage Daily News reported on a calamity-ridden domino effect in a story titled, "Island has dead birds, no rats" by Mike Campbell. The Alaska Nature Conservancy participated in a project which appears to have killed 227 birds (including 41 bald eagles), but succeeded in exterminating all living rodents on a 10-square-mile island. The Scientific American later reported on July 1, 2009 that liver samples from every one of the dead birds tested positive for brodifacoum, a poison used in the bait scattered on the island. The project, which followed a protocol approved by several government agencies, operated under the unfortunate name, "The Rat Island Restoration Project."
A story by Lena Sun in the Washington Post described the similarly unintended impact of rat poison on a bird population on July 30 2007. It recounted the death of 60 birds in a Metro station where a contractor had carelessly spread poison at the wrong time of day. The incident was later investigated by the FBI, which found no evidence of terrorist intent. Small comfort there.
By comparison, members of the farm and barn community may be light years ahead of the American norm. Instead of anti-coagulant poisons, they use cats to chase rodents away from grain supplies. (The ancient Egyptians also used cats in this way.) This approach is sufficiently well-established that barn cats have become part of American folklore. But novel methods such as these are far in the minority in our culture. When the Los Angeles Police Department enlisted six feral cats to undertake rodent patrol in their parking lots, as reported in the Los Angeles Times by Carla Hall on December 29, 2007, they were definitely breaking new ground. But few have followed their example.
Shelter Me, Inc., (http://www.sheltermeinc.org), an animal rescue organization, founded a successful barn cat program to re-home "unadoptable cats" as "mousers" 16 months ago. But efforts to extend this type of outreach ran up against a wall when the organization contacted neighborhood associations, and asked them to consider using feral cats to catch rats. There was considerable skepticism. Still, if persuasive examples of replicable alternatives can upset the status quo, one very powerful model exists in the Audubon Park Circle area of Boston. There, a group of neighbors stumbled upon a feral cat solution that resolved a rat problem in weeks that poison was unable to defeat in 20 years. Two of the home owners describe their experience in a video produced by Shelter Me, Inc., "Using Feral Cats to Control Rats" (4 min 7 sec) (http://www.sheltermeinc.org/story.php?id=56&feat_cat=14).
In striking contrast to the U.S., different countries in Asia are currently testing creative approaches to rat control. According to a June 27th report on UPI.com (http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/06/27/Owls-seen-as-solution-to-Laos-rat-problem/UPI-71911246132726/), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is encouraging communities in Northern Laos, which is facing the worst rat infestation in 20 years, to safeguard the native barn owl, which feeds almost exclusively on rats. The article quotes a local rodent expert as "ruling out rat poison as harmful to the environment." In the United States, this approach sounds extraordinary. However, the barn owl approach is well-established overseas.
In South Africa, the news site, http://www.iol.co.za reported on July 25, 2009 that the organizers of the 2010 World Cup need to "ensure that there are more tourists than rats in Cape Town" during the event. To that end, a local vet is quoted as "advocating for the pest control industry to use barn owls to decrease the use of rodenticides." Similar concerns about the toxic effects of rodenticides in Malaysia prompted the Pest Control Branch of the Department of Agriculture to halt assistance/subsidy for rat baits as early as 1993, "in order to promote biological control for rats using barn owls."
The website, Community Integrated Pest Management, (http://www.communityipm.org/Countries/malaysia.htm) describes the barn owl program as "effective and suitable," and reducing or eliminating chemical baits with no adverse effects.
Obviously rats have been a scourge for centuries and humankind has evolved many different ways to deal with them. Nevertheless, two of the most effective "agents" against them from a non-toxic perspective appear to be cats and barn owls. Ironically, it may be far easier to understand their value when they are absent. Consider the rats that carried the Black Plague across the continent in the mid-14th century. Between 20 million to 30 million people died from it. Not coincidentally, there were barely any cats left in Europe during that period. The cat population of Europe had been almost entirely destroyed due to religious superstitions. According to the author J. Stephen Lang ("1001 things you always wanted to know about cats") the most virulent form of plague disappeared from Europe around the time that an edict was issued in 1618 prohibiting the ceremonial annihilation of cats during Lenten celebrations.
Today, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it is estimated that there are somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 free-roaming cats. Some of them are being fed. Many of them are wild. Between 10,000 and 20,000 homeless (healthy) cats are being euthanized. They have no place to go. It's a shame. They can be put to work controlling rodents and do a better job, more safely and more economically than the poison-based approaches in use today.
Interested in learning how you can help? Questions? Email sandy@sheltermeinc.org.
- - - -
CONTACT: Sandy Bodner, Shelter Me, Inc., 617-549-8523, sandy@sheltermeinc.org
NOTE TO EDITORS: The above commentary is available for free and immediate use. If used, please contact Sandy Bodner, above, as a courtesy to the contributor.
Media Contact: See above.
|
|
|
AScribe Newswire distributes news from nonprofit and public sector organizations. We provide direct, immediate access to mainstream national media for 600 colleges, universities, medical centers, public-policy groups and other leading nonprofit organizations.
AScribe transmits news releases directly to newsroom computer systems and desktops of major media organizations via a supremely trusted channel - The Associated Press. We also feed news to major news retrieval database services, online publications and to developers of web sites and Intranets.
And AScribe does it at a cost all organizations, large and small, can afford, a fraction of what corporate newswires charge. Click here to see how we do it