JULY 11,
2019
by Chelsea
Himsworth, The
Conversation
Rats! They
eat our food, chew through our property and spread all sorts of nasty diseases. And they
are gross (right?), with those naked tails and quick, unpredictable movements.
Rats invade our homes—our castles!—the one place where we should be safe and in
control.
Over the
millennia that we have lived with them, rats have proven themselves virtually impossible to expunge. They are
so adaptable that they can exploit and infest virtually every corner of our
cities. They avoid traps and poisons and reproduce at such a staggering rate
that extermination attempts usually end up being a game of whack-a-mole… or,
rather, whack-a-rat.
Is it any
wonder that many cities seem to be plagued by rats? Or do the cities themselves
bear some responsibility for their rat problems? This is what I have been
exploring over the past 10 years as a wildlife and public health researcher
with the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative and the University of British
Columbia.
Challenges
of managing urban rodents
For the most
part, when it comes to dealing with rats, cities have it all wrong. For
example, rat-related issues are addressed using a hodgepodge of unrelated
policy and programming. At best, municipal leadership is highly fragmented; at
worst, it's absent altogether.
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