How Alberta Eradicated Rats

> But it was easy to prove warfarin was safe: a pest control officer held a series of local meetings where he ate warfarin-treated rolled oats while discussing rat control.

Got to love those live demos. Eating rat poison in front of the audience to prove it is safe!

A correction:

"One mayor refused to cooperate because he thought the program was a distraction cooked up by the ruling United Conservative Party."

The UCP was established in 2017 and has no relation to the Social Credit Party that controlled Alberta's legislature during the time period being spoken of.

I live in Alberta. No rats here. Also the ticks here don't spread Lyme disease.

I learned all about this from Joe Pera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LEJSMm1qpM

One of the bonus features of the movie Ratatouille has a short video-game sequence about it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-2xD9ShhMZU

There was a Joe Pera episode where they made a musical about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LEJSMm1qpM.

Tom Scott did a video a few years ago about New Zealand's attempt to eliminate rats by 2050.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcp1BfPUeOc

The program is actually called "Predator Free 2050" and also aims to eliminate possums and stoats. No mention is made of Uruk-hai, orcs, or Balrogs.

We sure have a lot of gophers though. They are cuter but you should still treat them like rats, no touch or try to play with them. Lots of diseases...

Related:

On the front lines of humanity’s high-tech, global war on rats (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17821534 - Aug 2018 (1 comment)

On the front lines of humanity’s high-tech war on rats - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9540096 - May 2015 (32 comments)

I thought there had been other threads about this but couldn't find them. Anyone?

Lots of rodents in Alberta. The neighbourhood cats keep the mice and hantavirus down. Aircraft are often infested with mice. We need more bullsnakes.

> Author: Deena Mousa

clearly an article sponsored by Big Mouse

I wonder if we stopped trying to eradicate coyotes we might have an easier time with rats. I personally would rather see a coyote than a rat.

Great read. I didn't know how exactly the rats were eradicated from Alberta something I have just heard and taken for granted. Reading the article provided a great overview of how much effort it really took to do it.

I would like to mention that, even though Alberta is rat free, we still have mice that can make your life misreble if they somehow enter your house/office.

Here in Boise Idaho, we are watching the local governments completely fail. We've not had rats here until somewhat recently. The State, County, and cities have all taken a "not our problem" attitude to it and instead of putting in any sort of pest management/eradication programs they've basically just said "good luck everyone".

Every so often I'll mention online that Alberta has no rats, and inevitably there will be an American responding in absolute disbelief saying I'm full of shit.

I may not live in Alberta, but luckily rats aren't really a thing in my neck of the woods. Travel an hour down the highway and it's a different story.

Also, as an aside, people often don't believe me when I say I've never seen a cockroach before in my life. Not a one. I've seen pictures of em, and I'm pretty sure if I saw one of those things irl I would absolutely shit myself.

Albertan here. Never seen a rat outside of a research lab. We do have mice though.

So, even impossible things can be made possible if there's enough determination and political will.

The Freakonomics podcast did a series on rats and their relationship to cities and humans and talked about Alberta's approach—it was really fascinating, I'd recommend it: https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/sympathy-for-the-rat

The whole public buy-in is very much what is going on in Queensland, Australia right now that is attempting to eradicate fire ants. Even the funding fight to get the Commonwealth and neighbouring states to pitch in, as they have the potential to become endemic to the whole continent.

We also have a lot of "sovereign citizen" people pushing misinformation about the safety of the various chemicals used, attempting to deny inspectors onto properties, and general complaints about helicopter/drone dispersal in inaccessible areas and large farms/properties.

there's no rats but there has been an uptick in voles and other rodents

also Alberta, Canada mentioned

I wonder if people could do bed bugs? Those are rather annoying.

https://www.alberta.ca/albertas-rat-control-program

Relevant government website for those curious

We have online reporting for rat sightings that they take action on

... ... all i learned is that eventually Alberta will have rats, and that nowhere else can ever replicate their success. Thank you, next

Alberta has shown us that proper policy incentives can drive meaningful change. Instead of leaving rats to languish in cellars, they created incentives for them to do meaningful work in the provincial government instead.