Article originally appeared in the Hartford Courant

A Connecticut town is piloting a rodent birth control program to manage the town’s rodent population in a more environmentally responsible way, and animal rights advocates are hailing it as a success.

The program focuses on fertility management rather than lethal means like rat poison, which can harm local birds of prey. The innovative program is funded for one year by Fairfield’s Conservation and Public Works Departments, Friends of Animals in Darien and Call of the Wild CT, an organization dedicated to wildlife rehabilitation.

Earlier this year, Fairfield voted to no longer use a class of poisons known as second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, or SGARs, on municipal property. The poison is extremely toxic and doesn’t discriminate between rodents and other animals, advocates say.

SGAR’s have already been banned from stores in Connecticut and can only be used by licensed commercial applicators. In recent years, lawmakers have introduced bills to ban the rodenticide altogether, citing its high risks to young children, pets and other animals.

Animal rights advocates like Jack Keller with Friends of Animals, a Darien-based nonprofit animal advocacy group, said these toxins, which can linger in rodents for up to 10 days after ingestion, pose severe risks to predators like hawks and eagles that consume rodents.

“The problem is that these rodenticides don’t immediately kill rodents. Many times they are still up and moving days after consuming them,” Keller said. “We see a lot of birds of prey like eagles and hawks testing positive for the rodenticide.”

Keller, one of the volunteers who placed the traps around town last month, said that the pilot program aims to show town officials it can be successful in managing the rodent population. He said the town chose to focus the rodent control near its transfer station on Richard White Way, which has historically had a rodent problem, and a trash collection area near the Fairfield Theatre Company.

The town terminated its previous contract with a pest control company to instead partner with WISDOM Good Works, an Arizona-based non-profit that offers a non-toxic bait that renders female mice and rats infertile, in a one-year pilot program. The rodents are rendered infertile through non-toxic, plant-based fertility control pellets called “Good Bites” for rats and other rodents. The pellets are being used in pilot programs across the United States, including Boston, Chicago and Marco Island, Florida, according to the company.

“There has been a lot of success with these pilot programs,” Keller said. “The hope is that if it successful in Fairfield, it will become more widely adopted in the state. We are still early in the study, but we believe it should be successful.”