As the other volunteers and I filled the last feeding station with Good Bites—non-toxic, all natural, plant-derived rodent birth control pellets—at a transfer station in Fairfield, Connecticut, we looked up and saw an osprey watching us from atop a telephone pole.

Perhaps he was giving us his seal of approval. While osprey are primarily fish eaters, on the rare occasion they eat a mouse, they don’t want it to be full of deadly toxic second-generation anti-coagulant rodenticides (SGARS).

Unfortunately, other raptors such as hawks, owls and eagles, and other mammals, are under siege from these powerful, long-lasting poisons making their way up the food chain. Anticoagulants work by preventing blood from clotting. So, animals are dying a slow agonizing death from internal bleeding after consuming poisoned rodents who’ve taken the bait from those ubiquitous black boxes you see outside grocery stores, around housing developments and town parks.

That’s why Friends of Animals is not only working tirelessly to make it illegal to use SGARS in CT, but also provided a donation to help facilitate the year-long rodent birth control pilot program in Fairfield. In addition to promoting sanitation and exclusion methods as the most effective ways to keep mice and rats away, FoA has also been advocating for birth control to help manage populations when necessary since it is not harmful to non-target wildlife.

Ted Luchsinger, a member of Fairfield’s Conservation Commission and Forestry Committee, reached out to FoA after hearing us talk about WISDOM Good Works at the Connecticut League of Conservation Voter’s Environmental Summit.

Fairfield’s Department of Public Works partnered with the Arizona nonprofit WISDOM Good Works, co-founded by Dr. Loretta Mayer, because officials want to protect local predatory birds. The town is targeting two locations—the Transfer Station and the compactor behind the Fairfield Theatre Company.

WISDOM Good Works has already achieved success with other pilot programs across the country in a wide range of settings.“To measure the impact on a particular site you must consider whether the perimeter is open or closed. For example, if you are working in a completely sealed building as we were in an animal sanctuary in Utah, we were able to measure a sustained 98% mouse population reduction within three months,” saidAlaina Gonzalez-White, WISDOM Good Works director of operations.

In the outdoor urban setting of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood in Boston, she had to take into consideration that there would be immigration—rats don’t observe property lines.

“In this open arenawe were still able to reduce the population by a sustained 56% within five months and 72% at month 10.”

She explained that reducing by 50-60% is really where a balance is found, when there is no longer human wildlife conflict. In other words, rodents are no longer a nuisance, they are no longer getting into your garbage cans—at that point it can really be a reduction that can be claimed as a win.

During our training session on April 30, Gonzalez-White emphasized how safe Good Bites is by eating the pellets. I sampled some too!

The pellets consist of peanut butter, corn meal, wheat flour, rice flour, oats, table sugar, and root powder from the Thunder God Vine. The active ingredients of the Thunder God Vine prevent sperm maturation and fertility as well as ovarian egg development and ovulation. The active ingredients act quickly and, in a few weeks, individual mice or rat’s fertility has ceased. Then, in a few months, enough individuals in the population are infertile to reduce the population size. They must keep eating the pellets to stay infertile.

We set up 12 rodent feeding stations at the Transfer station where poison lethal stations used to be. We will continue to service them and the data we collect will be monitored remotely by WISDOM Good Works’ team of scientists using their data portal.

A future without poison

Gonzalez-White said the goal of WISDOM Good Works is to provide a future without poison.

“We have been battling and poisoning pest rodents for centuries and still struggle with overpopulation because they reproduce their way out of any killing strategy. Plus, there are the unintended, catastrophic side effects of poisoning non target species, persisting in the food chain and creating an imbalance in our environment,” she said.

She points out that poison is costly because rodents that remain will continue to procreate leading to a rebound of population within weeks, so you must apply poison repeatedly. Not to mention rats can evolve resistance to poison so stronger poisons are necessary to have the intended effect. 

Imagine the impact on wildlife!

On the bright side, she believes that as more communities and states turn away from harmful rodenticide use, safer and more environmentally friendly options will become the norm.

“We know that overpopulated rodents are a public health risk, but if the way we mitigate those risks does more harm to our environment than good, we must ask ourselves if the cost is worth the effort,” Gonzalez-White said. “It takes a community willing to go first, to lead the way for an idea to take hold and become widely accepted. Having Fairfield be willing to try fertility control at the city level will create the tools for other cities to follow suit. 

“It’s never easy to go first. But everyone that has helped pave the way for this pilot study in Fairfield deserves a cape because they are personal heroes of mine.” 

At FoA, our heroes are people who understand that healthy ecosystems need rodents. Rodents play a role in determining which plants propagate and where by eating and dispersing their seeds.

At FoA we’re not sure how anyone draws the line on how many rodents amount to “over-populated” ones, but all too often there is an undeniable human intolerance of them.

Don’t forget they are an invaluable link in the food chain, sustaining predators which include birds of prey, wolves, snakes and even spiders.

Nicole Rivard is Media/Government Relations Manager at Friends of Animals. She helps direct FoA’s legislative outreach and brings 29 years of journalism experience to FoA’s Action Line magazine and to the front lines—protesting and documenting atrocities against animals.